Andrew Chudzik has spent some time building a bumper on his team’s robot.
Covered with white cloth and built with swimming pool tubes, the bumper is a needed accessory for protection against other elements.
“The bumper is in case a smaller robot is in the way or it hits the wall,” the City High freshman said.
Chudzik is a member of the Iowa City Robotics team that is aiming to build the best robot in a regional and national contest this spring. Comprised of students from City High and West High, the team is entering a robot to compete in a series of skill challenges at a regional competition in Milwaukee March 13 to 15 with hopes of competing in the national contest at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta April 17 to 19.
The contests are sponsored by USFIRST, or the Foundation for the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, a program designed to encourage high school students to explore engineering careers, according to Dominic Audia, a technology teacher at City High and West High. Sponsored locally by the University of Iowa engineering department and Rockwell Collins, the group has grown to 22 members this year, Audia said.
“We’ve doubled the amount of kids doing it every year,” he said. “We try to get the kids to contribute as much as they can.”
The competition has a series of rules each of the 40 high school teams competing in Milwaukee must follow. To score points, the robot must either pick up a 40-inch, 10-pound ball and place it on a six-foot high pedestal, take a lap on a track, or shoot a ball over a balcony.
Nate Davidson, a West High senior, said the group originally considered using a catapult or a counter-balance to move the move. They ultimately decided on a claw-like arm that grabs the ball with about 200 pounds of pressure and lifts it, using a wrist mechanism to help hold the ball.
“We can grab the ball and put it against ourselves,” Davidson, 18, said.
Other students in the group devoted their attention to constructing the robot’s drive train and transmission as well as programming a small computer to allow it to be controlled. West High senior Adam Mekies and West High sophomore Brett Hanson spent much of last Wednesday feb. 13 fixing the steering on the mechanism. Mekies said the work is what attracted him to the club.
“I’ve been doing stuff like this since I was little,” he said. “I figured I’d come here and do this with other kids my age.”
Helping out the students are mentors from Rockwell Collins and the UI engineering department, which supplied much of the $6,000 entry fee. Andy Veit, an engineer with the National Advanced Driving Simulator at UI, said he decided to help out because of his enthusiasm for engineering.
“(The students) learned what engineers do and what we’re like,” he said. “It demystifies what we do … and you get students interested in engineering careers.”
By Rob Daniel
Iowa City Press-Citizen
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