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Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
CELINA - Shortly after Celina Middle School let out for the day on a Tuesday afternoon, about 15 teens gathered in a classroom and immediately got down to business, demonstrating a singular, preternatural focus as they worked to sharpen their robot's maneuverability and aim in firing a whiffle ball into a receptacle.
The coders were typing away on their laptops and the robot drivers examining their PlayStation-like controllers, while a lone builder tinkered with the robot in the center of a 12-foot-square playing field with foam-tiled flooring and 1-foot-high walls, fashioned in accordance with the FIRST Tech Challenge requirements for this school year's challenge.
Roughly 15 teens comprise the Robo Dogs, Celina City Schools' first FTC robotics team. Founded this school year, it's open to students in grades 7-12 and coached by Celina STEM, engineering and 3D modeling instructor Jon Gudorf and Celina Middle School dean of students Pete Lisi.
FTC is a youth robotics program where teams practice engineering innovation as they design, build and program a robot to compete. The Celina students get together for an hour at a time on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school to strengthen their robot's performance.
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
"It's nonstop, 'How do we make this better?'" Gudorf said of his team's attitude and diligence. "How do we improve upon turning? How do we protect the wires? Like right now, he (seventh grader Riley Snyder) is installing a bumper in the back to help give us another ability to push the (whiffle) balls in some direction."
"I just kept adding on to see what could make it work better and score some more points," Snyder said about his role as robot builder.
Though new to FTC, the Celina students are enthusiastic and eager to make upgrades to their robot following their appearance in the Dayton Qualifier held at Sinclair Community College on Dec. 13. Their next event is the Van Wert Qualifier on Jan. 17.
"I mean, we didn't place amazing at all, but it was our first go, and they all got to see what we've been talking about," Gudorf said. "(But) they did great. One big thing with FTC - they say it a lot - is gracious professionalism. And so at one point they announced, 'Hey, we need these type of bolts for another team, do you have any extras?' and our kids were looking to see if we had any of those extras."
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
Last school year, Celina Middle School students took part in the Mercer County Board of Developmental Disabilities first STEM Invention Challenge, an event designed to solve real-life challenges faced by those with disabilities.
During their lunch break, the students created a custom wrist brace with supportive metal that helps position and lift large boxes or cases of water, greatly helping two students who experience difficulty lifting heavy items due to limited hand mobility.
"We knew we wanted to go this FTC route, and so we structured that whole build like an FTC competition. We didn't build a robot, but FTC is all about the kids communicating the beginning, middle and the end," Gudorf said. "The prototyping, everyone's hands-on with the design, working together."
After getting a taste of the FTC process through the STEM Invention Challenge, many of the students joined the new Celina robotics team this school year, Gudorf noted.
But fielding a robotics team from scratch costs money.
"That's what we started last year also, that outreach," Gudorf explained. "We started having kids reach out to local community businesses and organizations like the Eagles and the Moose and so forth to ask for donations to fund this year's program. … We can't say how happy we were with the businesses."
Lisi agreed that there are many facets involved with the robotics team.
"You've got your outreach which is going to be your connecting with the community, fundraising and getting the message out. That's really big," Lisi said. "You have the actual engineering design, and then you have the programming, and you put those three together before you ever step into the arena, and then you have the robotic competition itself."
FTC, Lisi noted, emphasizes the development of a well-rounded set of skills.
"So even if you're not a robotic person or a person that's big into the robot, the outreach is great for you," he said.
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
In September, FTC rolled out a video of this school year's challenge - creating a robot that follows autonomous commands before student drivers take control and perform various tasks, including firing whiffle balls into an elevated receptacle.
"There's many different ways where you can have what they call autonomous, where you have sensors that read the color of the whiffle ball, and then there's a (point won) if you put them in a certain order," Lisi explained.
In addition to the autonomous opening, there's also a teleop component of the competition.
"That's kids controlling, doing everything they can to make as many balls in that hoop as possible," Gudorf added. "Every movement performed by the robot has been coded."
The best part of the whole process is watching the students' creativity emerge in untold ways.
"You have the freedom to build any way you want - as long as you fit within the parameters from FTC - to get as many points as possible," Gudorf said. "We kind of went off of like an intro kit that basically its biggest strength is its ability to launch (whiffle balls) and make it into those receptacles."
There are a few restrictions, though. For this competition, the dimensions of the robot must be 18 inches by 18 inches by 18 inches, Lisi pointed out.
"You cannot use pneumatics. There is no hydraulics, anything like that. Everything has to be run by motors," he said.
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge Dayton Qualifier held at Sinclair Community College on Dec. 13. Their next event is the Van Wert Qualifier on Jan. 17.
The students built their robot in 54 steps over the course of several weeks. Each student could assume the role of builder, coder, driver or outreach specialist.
"The builders and the coders have to work together because what they're doing with the builder is going to potentially affect the code. So they've got to always be communicating back and forth," Gudorf said.
The drivers must accustom themselves to the coding, too.
"There's different speed levels. There's a booster that they put on there. There's a button where they can go a little faster," Gudorf said.
There's also a good deal of experimentation and trial and error across the board.
Among the issues that arose during the building and fine-tuning process were the robot's inability to propel a whiffle ball into the receptacle and drive straight, eighth grader Ethan Roller pointed out.
"We figured out two motors were flipped. So now they drive straight, but the motor that was supposed to go there was not powerful enough," he said. "So basically we gutted it, took the planetary gear out and then put in a one-to-one conversion and put everything back together, and now we have a full 6,000 RPMs to play with."
Celina City Schools' first FTC robotics team was founded this school year and is open to students in grades 7-12. The team is coached by Celina STEM, engineering and 3-D modeling instructor Jon Gudorf and Celina Middle School dean of students Pete Lisi.
The Celina Robo Dogs enjoyed their first competition at Sinclair Community College, observing firsthand the gracious professionalism as described by Gudorf and finding inspiration in the robots on hand.
"It was really fun, walking around and seeing these cool robots, interacting with people," said freshman Chase Moore, who is one of the team's drivers.
Looking ahead to the next event at Van Wert High School, the team is focused on improving the angle in which the whiffle balls are fired out, as well as the robot's maneuverability.
"We are going to try and get new wheels for that so we can go in all directions. It can go straight, it can go forward and backwards and turn on a dime," said eighth grader Hunter Collins, a coder. "We are also going to try and get some autonomous working … get it to go for a little bit because that gives us three extra points."
All in all, Gudorf said he's extremely proud of the students and relishes his role as coach.
"I love it," he said. "It gives them something to think about for their future and gives them the ability to be creative with robotics. Robotics isn't going anywhere. I mean, it's just getting more developed every day."
Members of Celina City Schools' Robo Dogs practice for the FIRST Tech Challenge after the school day last week in the Middle School.
