Over the weekend, Chapel Hill High School’s gymnasium looked a lot different than usual. Large metal structures, orange circular disks and large scoreboard screens turned the main court into a robotics playing field – no basketballs allowed, safety goggles required.
“Aquila” is the name of a robot designed by students from Chapel Hill High School’s robotics team the “Titanium Tigers.” The robot’s square frame was filled with colorful cords and wires and a hard plastic structure with wheels that could pick up and shoot the orange discs called “notes” with precision.
Aquila was far from the only robot on Chapel Hill High School’s campus over the weekend. Thirty student-run robotics teams from 16 different counties in North Carolina brought their robots too, each with a different design.
They were there to compete for regional recognition from FIRST, a global robotics nonprofit that gets its acronym from “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The group hosts many events throughout the year where, under strict rules and with limited time and resources, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team “brand,” and build industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against competitors.
The theme of this year’s regional event was “CRESCENDO” and teams were encouraged to combine their creative ideas with their engineering skills. Instead of fighting or attacking each other, the robots had to maneuver through obstacles, climb chains, pick up and throw the notes – all while racing against the clock.
One of the newer teams there Saturday came from Burlington, and is named “SeQuEnCe”. Their team is made up of just eight students, compared to some other teams with numbers in the 50s.
13-year old JT Grote, a member of SeQuEnCe, said he’s gained a lot from his first year on the team.
“You’re not just building a robot,” Grote said, “you’re building friendships. I didn’t even know these guys like two months ago and now it’s like we’re besties.”
He said the friendship was a product of a lot of late nights.
“We probably spent like 100 plus hours on this robot [and] a couple of long nights. And we’ve got like a nine hour day on Saturdays, most of the time. It takes a while to build a robot” Grote added.
The group recently redesigned their logo and were repping a bright green shirt with an original design of a dragon riding on a train. According to 18-year old Cheyenne Knight, who designed the shirt and updated the team’s website, they chose a dragon because of the fibonacci sequence formed by its tail.
One of the weekend’s judges was David Campbell, who serves on the board of FIRST North Carolina. He said the competition is also about cooperation, teamwork and operating the team “like a company.”
“We look for diversity, engagement, inspiration, engineering know-how;” Campbell said. “we look for everything that makes up a robotics team that’s going to be effective and make them potentially win out on the field… I always like to say this is so much more than just robots.”
The SeQuEnCe team robot “Fibonacci I” on the playing field on Saturday, March 2, 2024. (Danny Levenson)
Another judge, Wendy Toh, added FIRST wants to inspire students to get excited about engineering.
“I think one of the things we find, especially for the teams in the smaller counties, the more rural counties, having a FIRST team means exposing kids to STEM, to professions they might not normally think about and that’s really valuable,” Toh said.
15-year old Wake County students Abinaya Srinivasan, Alexandra Atanasova and Shivani Ramkumar are examples of that sentiment. The trio said they want to pursue careers in robotics, thanks to their time on the team.
“I actually found out I wanted to be an engineer thanks to robotics,” Srinivasan said.
“Yeah,” Atanasova added, “starting on the robotics team made me want to become an engineer as well.”
For Ramkumar, the team strengthened skills she already planned to use in the future.
“I’ve always wanted to do something robotics related, but being part of this team really solidified that hobby,” she said.
Meanwhile, the SeQuEnCe team watched their robot compete in the first practice round, and Grote said their main challenge was going to be maintaining good communication during the competition.
“I think one of our most challenging things is just like maneuvering throughout the other robots and our climb sometimes has problems, but communication, we got to work on that,” he said.
The weekend was made up of individual and team competitions and spanned both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday evening, when the regional event finally did come to a close, Carrboro, East Chapel Hill and Chapel Hill High School were among the top scoring teams, and SeQuEnCe earned the “Team Spirit Award.”
The SeQuEnCe robotics team poses for a picture after receiving the “Team Spirit Award”. (Danny Levenson)
For a complete list of awards, click here.
Featured photo courtesy of Danny Levenson
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