Robotics season comes to a close after state competition

Team 1024, a student robotics team dubbed “Kil-A-Bytes”, achieved their highest-ever finish in the 2017 Indiana FIRST State Championship, exiting at the quarterfinal round at the tournament held at Huntington North High School on April 8th.

The team, comprised of students from LN and LC competing as an unified team representing McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology, tied 453-453 on that round but failed to advance. They previously had scored four consecutive victories at the two-day competition, but two subsequent losses were not enough for them to prevail.

They qualified for the state championship after advancing to the final round of Tippecanoe Regional competition last March at William Henry Harrison High School in West Lafayette, but an early exit denied them a chance to represent Indiana at the World Championship in St. Louis later this April.

Each year in January, FIRST Robotics releases a video overview of the game that the robot will compete in, as well as a manual with the official rules.  The team was given six weeks to design and build a functioning robot.

“This is a game where you need to pick up gears from loaded station and transform it into an airship,“ junior Keith Preston, one of the team member, said.  “And you can also shoot fuel balls into the boiler,” Preston said.

With four years of high school robotics experience, Preston pointed out the complexity of competitive robotics.

“There is so many different parts of it, so you always have to work it together. You have to set up so many different aspects: mechanicals, physics and others,” Preston said.

Team cohesion is also crucial as the tournament was unique for randomly pairing different teams as an “alliance” comprised of three teams. Preston believes that this can significantly affect their eventual ranking.

“Not only designing the robot, but also the cooperation that make sure that the team is running together. A lot of time we were paired with teams that didn’t do so well,” Preston, who plans to major in engineering in college, said.

Preston isn’t the only student using robotics as a springboard for a future career in engineering. Senior Alexis Hunter is a member of the mechanical team with 1024, and feels her involvement in the team has helped prepare her for working in various fields of engineering.

“With the robotics I’ve learned a lot of different skills,” Hunter said. “I know how to operate a lot of different machines and I’ve learned better time management, teamwork and problem-solving throughout my four years of robotics that will help me throughout any career I go into.”

Jeff Smith, a faculty member at McKenzie and advisor for the robotics team, also pointed out technical flaws in their own design.

“We caught some bad breaks and didn’t make the World Championship,” Smith said. “Probably our biggest challenge was getting our automatic mode to work.”

Aside from their parents and teachers, the students are also helped by several mentors from local engineering companies throughout the course of their season. Their assistances are mainly on the prototype phase and design aspects.

“FIRST have huge emphasis on mentors,” Preston said. “We find it very useful, as they bring experience in the actual field.”

Still, they have positive reflection on their achievement this year.

“It's a pretty good team,” Smith said. “They’ve produced a very strong and competitive robot.”

Preston agreed, citing their design as a very critical part of their success.

“We were able to work with different types of robots. Our robot has done its job very well,” he said.

The experience also taught them some valuable lessons for future endeavors.

“Stay honest and professional even if things goes wrong,” Preston said.

As for next year, Smith hopes to see more students joining the team, and also to explore a different sides of robotics.

“I’d like to see more [involvement] with community service-related side,” Smith said.

An edited version of this story appeared in the 28 April 2017 edition of North Star, the student newspaper of Lawrence North High School, Indianapolis.