Decatur/Austin robotics team prepares for competition

Nov. 4—If all goes as expected at a competition Saturday, two robots built by the Decatur Austin Robotics Coalition (DARC) will work together operating a mechanized assembly line.

The 24 students from Decatur and Austin high schools were working feverishly this week in preparation for the the Tennessee Valley BEST Classic competition at Calhoun Community College, where DARC will compete against 11 other teams.

"One of the biggest obstacles this year has been time," Austin senior Jada McClendon, head of engineering and a DARC member since she was a freshman, said during practice. "Every second counts in here. Whether it's drilling the holes or putting half the robot together, it all counts."

The winning teams at Saturday's competition will advance to a regional tournament at Auburn University.

McClendon said DARC has opened doors for her, helping her to choose a career path and landing her a full-ride scholarship to the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona, where she will pursue a degree in robotic engineering.

"I want to go into the field of building robots and their mechanics," McClendon said. "DARC has definitely taught me how to go through an engineering process. You develop a prototype and you test it and brainstorm and test it again."

Team members said they have developed skills in leadership, robotics and computer programming through their participation in DARC, and they hope those skills bring the team a winning season this year.

This year's theme for BEST Robotics is "Made 2 Order." DARC players have built two robots that work in unison on an assembly line. One robot has two wheels on either side of its 24-inch frame with a small, free-turning wheel on the back and two mechanized arms in the front. That robot, known as Griffin, uses its arms to move the levers in a control booth with a 110-volt battery that gives their assembly line power.

On the assembly line is another robot the students named Squeaky. Once Griffin activates the control booth, Squeaky gets to work.

"Before Griffin goes to the control booth, he has to successfully place an 'arm' (PVC pipe) on Squeaky that Squeaky will use to pick objects up and drop them in the order boxes," said Austin senior Eric Salgado, CEO of this year's team.

Squeaky travels up and down the assembly line picking up objects and dropping them in "order" boxes located on either side of the assembly line, giving viewers a live mock-up of an industrial warehouse in action.

"If Squeaky successfully drops an object in an order box, we'll get points," Salgado said. "Four teams will compete against each other at the same time."

Each match starts with a driver and a spotter who hooks Squeaky's PVC pipe onto Griffin's frame at the beginning of the match. A team can have up to four drivers but only one spotter. Austin senior Enrique Garcia is the team's designated spotter.

"Enrique is really quick so that makes him a good spotter," Salgado said. "He has to get that pipe on there as quick as he can so Griffin can take it to Squeaky."

Each match lasts three minutes.

This is Salgado's first year in DARC and he said it has enhanced his understanding of computer programming. He is considering attending Texas A&M University, Auburn University or the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

"Since I was little, I always knew I wanted to do something in a STEM-related field," Salgado said.

BEST robotics teams must also present an engineering notebook and a marketing plan. The engineering notebook documents the team's progress, starting from when they first began building the robots eight weeks ago.

"We had to explain the engineering and design process that we used in the engineering notebook," said Tim Church, an Austin sophomore who wrote the notebook. "If the prototype didn't work, we had to document that it didn't work, how it didn't work, and what we did to improve it."

To program the robots, Austin sophomore Elizabeth Saunders used ROBOTC, which is a text-based programming language. With this software, commands to the robot are written as text on a computer screen which are then processed by the ROBOTC compiler into a machine language file and loaded onto the robot, where they can be launched.

Salgado and McClendon said they have high hopes for the competition but McClendon said she is expecting the unexpected.

"At a competition like this anything can happen, so we'll see," McClendon said.

The competition Saturday will be held at Kelley Gymnasium on Calhoun's Decatur campus and will begin at 10 a.m. with a concluding award ceremony scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Athens Bible School will also be competing from the Decatur area.

— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438.