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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Monta Vista High School students Alan Cheng and Raj Nishtala direct their robot's movements from behind a glass during the competition at Moffett Field.
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Inside the Machine Tomorrow's innovators make technology come alive
By Michelle Ku
The buzzer sounds and the light turns on; it's off to the races for Sparky.
Revving its engine, Sparky runs for the puck in the center of the ring and rolls on top of it.
From the other side, Robo Bear makes a mad dash for the center, extending the wooden arm in an attempt to knock off Sparky.
Unwilling to back down, Sparky tightens its hold on the puck and fights for position.
In the meantime, seemingly oblivious to the battle in the center, Beach Bot II, Sparky's teammate, is being loaded with "floppies"--stuffed pillows--by a human player and before it moves to assist Sparky by pushing the puck toward their zone.
The fourth combatant, Rambo, malfunctions and doesn't make it out of the corner to join in the battle.
When the buzzer sounds again, Sparky and Beach Bot are victorious. Their victory over Robo Bear and Rambo, the teams from Willow Glen and Granite Bay high schools, moves them into the semifinals of the NASA Ames California Regional.
Sparky is a robot designed by the students of Monta Vista High School. The robot is the school's entry into the FIRST--For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology--robot competition.
FIRST, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to generate an interest in science and engineering among youth, holds an annual robotics competition. The national competition will be held April 22, 23 and 24 at Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla.
At regionals, held at Moffett Field Feb. 25, 26 and 27, Monta Vista placed fourth with Hope Chapel Academy, its alliance team from Hermosa Beach. Sparky also received the "Outstanding Defense Round Award."
In addition to performing well at regionals, the team of 44 students, received an award from Cupertino Mayor Wally Dean on Feb. 16.
This was the first time NASA Ames had held a regional competition, said Christy Budenbender, an event organizer.
"It worked out well," Budenbender says. "When some of the robots were destroyed on impact, we called in our engineers onsite to help fix them. Then they noticed other robots needed some help, and they went back and got more engineers to come help. They were really instrumental in making sure that every single robot that started the competition finished it."
Twenty-seven teams from the western region, including several from the Bay Area, participated in the event. Regardless of how a school placed at the competition, every school will be represented at nationals.
NASA Ames hosted because it's one of the leading organizations in the development of artificial intelligence.
"It was exciting to see the looks on the students' faces when their robot beat another team," Budenbender says. "It really brought them together and made them united."
The western region has never had a regional competition before. Although NASA Ames geared the event toward generating interest in the community, it gave students the opportunity to work on the strategy in playing the game.
"It was fun, exciting and frustrating all at the same time," says senior Allan Cheng, who controlled Sparky. "We didn't have that much time to practice. We worked all the way up to the last day building and fixing the robot. Most of the practice came at the NASA regional competition."
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
The Monta Vista team makes adjustments to Sparky the day before the competition.
This year's team was working in the shadows of El Toro, last year's robot, said senior Abby Lin, team spokesperson.
El Toro, was a landmark robot for Monta Vista because it was the first time the school participated in the robotics competition, which began in 1992. For a first-year entrant, El Toro placed in the middle of the approximately 300-team field and took second place in the animation category during the national event.
"Last year we wanted to place in the top half," said senior Shirley Lai, the founder and president of Monta Vista's robotics team. "But what we really wanted was not to place last or second to last."
Lai learned about the competition last year when she was volunteering at the Tech Museum. Another volunteer told her about the robot his school was building, but Lai, believing it was a robot to benefit mankind, wasn't that interested.
Lai's interest in the robot was finally piqued when she discovered that it would be used for game playing. Believing it would be fun to build a robot for that purpose, Lai returned to Monta Vista with the intention of starting her own team.
Student interest was generally high, but finding a team advisor proved to be more difficult, Lai said. She didn't find an advisor until the eighth teacher she asked.
He joined the team last year because he liked engineering, and Monta Vista didn't have any other programs with such practical hands-on application of engineering, said senior Rajesh Nishtala, who operated Sparky's arm.
The team, which had six weeks to design and build a robot, is run like a corporation. The students divided into four main groups--mechanical, electrical, animation and administrative.
While the mechanical and electrical groups worked with three professional engineers on the development of the robot, the administrative end raised the funds--$10,000 through sponsorships and donations--necessary for entry fees and materials.
"The emphasis was to get the kids to do the work and thinking," said Satya Nishtala, an engineer with Sun Microsystems. "I was more of a support role so they could bounce ideas off me and for me to make suggestions. I looked to see if they got the things right because if they don't, it's going to blow up. It's no fun if the engineers build the robot and the kids take it to Florida. It's more fun for these guys to do the critical thinking and do the implementation."
To maintain interest in the competition, the game the robots play is different each year.
Last year, the robots played a basketball-like game in which there were three posts of differing heights. If it placed a ball in the center post, the robot received triple points. Different point values were assigned to the other two posts.
Team members agreed this year's game was much more challenging to play and design for.
Rather than playing as an individual, the robots worked in teams of two. Together they had to pick up as many floppies as possible, raise them eight feet high and gain an advantageous position by either moving the puck into their section of the playing field or raising themselves two feet off the ground.
"Last year we just needed to move a ball eight feet high and then drop it," said senior Sean Kim. "This year we needed to move the puck, pick up a floppy, move the floppy and work in conjunction with another robot. We have to do a lot more, but it's more fun."
Animation is the category in which the students create a computer- generated sequence of their robot in action. This year's animation has a space theme, and Sparky works in alliance with El Toro.
The team also submitted a video they created for the Chairman's Award. The 15-minute video is designed to show the interaction between the community and the team in the creation of the robot.
"The real challenge was to find a way to show somebody who doesn't know anything about robotics a little glimpse of what goes on," said senior Ted Sander, the student who did the editing and mixing.
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