Ronan High Schoolers have qualified for the world championship Robotic competitions, which would be held in St. Louis in April 2011 by getting the highest scores for their robot.
Ronan High School students Thane Tobol, left, and Troy McMillan piloted their robot to the highest score posted in the nation this year as the school’s robotics team qualified for the world championships in St. Louis next month.
To participate in the St. Louis championships the Ronan team called as SD30 Robotics, is planning to raise funds through a spaghetti dinner at the Ronan Community Center with tickets for children, family and also raffle tickets. The team would also be exhibiting their robot. Simplicity was the main focus of the team.
This year’s game, “Get Over It” was on a 12’ x 12’ field consisting of obstacles, which the robots must successfully maneuver while doing different point scoring jobs. The other teams had constructed highly complicated arms that could lower the ramps to allow the robots to drive over them. However, the Ronan team had just twisted the ends of its robot’s frame up resembling a ski tip. Thane Tobol states that while other robots drive up to the ramp stop there and utilizes their arms to lower the ramp their robot just runs right over it and then tips the ramp into position, which is much simpler.
The SD30 Robotics has already won the Inspire Award and has been selected to be a member of the Winning Alliance in the Montana First Technical Challenge held in Bozeman in February. While McMillan handled the engineering and constructed the robot, Tobol took care of the programming side. In this year’s game, the field is divided by two cliffs represented by two ramps or bridges with one mountain in the center. Scoring points is done when the robot removes the 6 inch PVC tubes or batons from the dispensers, which are present around the field and place them into either rolling or stationary goals. Many other teams participating in the field also do the same thing on the same field at the same time.
During the qualifying matches, teams are randomly paired to compete. With alliances of two teams a total of four robots are found moving in the field at any given point of time. Ronan won with high scores in five qualifying matches thus having a perfect record along with the highest score posted ever but still coming second with a team from Folsom in California leading. Ronan then went on to win two semifinal matches with scores of 72-26 and 79-24. Having observed with an eagle eye both the plus point and the negatives of the robot at the state completion McMillan is currently re-designing it before taking it to the world championship. He states that he wants to drop the center of gravity and is also covering some of the wiring with PVC pipes on the chassis so that they do not get pulled out during the competition. According to Gray, their team had always found a place in the top ten but in the past, a number of technical errors had crept in and hence this year instead of constructing engineering marvels to lower the ramps Ronan team had decided to smash into them successfully taking them to the world championships.