The Portsmouth Abbey Robotics team is a student club whose primary mission is to compete in the national Botball® competition. Botball.org, an educational robotics program that engages middle and high school-aged students in a team-oriented robotics competition, has been conducting robotics competitions for high schools since the 1990s. Nine members of the Abbey Robotics team traveled to Rahway, NJ, on May 9, 2015, to compete in the New York/New Jersey Botball® Tournament. It is the second year of Abbey Botball® participation and the first year that Abbey students were successfully able to compete in the tournament.
The competition requires teams to build and program two autonomous robots that simultaneously perform specified tasks on a large table-top course. Robots are made of Lego components powered by servo motors controlled by an on-board computer. Points for each competition are earned by a variety of methods; in general, there are more ways to score points than time allows to complete the tasks so that part of the competition is dependent on developing an optimal strategy for earning points. In addition, students must design and build the robots and then program them to execute the chosen tasks.
As a student club, the time availability for students cuts into their discretionary time between dinner and study hall. Nevertheless, a core group of about a dozen students committed, on average, 50 hours each to the project.
Science teacher Dave Wilson P '15, '16, '18 served as faculty advisor to the group and helped plan for the competition. Mr. Wilson said, "The effort is almost entirely student driven. My role has been to run interference for them and make sure they had the resources they needed. I also tried to help them develop a plan that would make sure all participants were given valued and specific tasks that were part of an organized solution to the challenge. After that I mostly got out of the way and made sure they were on track time-wise, letting students make all of the design and control decisions themselves. As the deadline approached, students responded to the challenge by working every night, and many of the nine students representing the Abbey at the competition pulled all-nighters the night before, getting on the bus at 4:30 AM bound for New Jersey."
Key student organizers were Jerry Lin '16 and Fenton Billings '15. Jerry described his experience, saying, "Mr. Wilson helped us a lot with the overall team management and future planning. Our team this year was very competent and organized compared to last year's chaotic situation. He gave me a lot of helpful advice to keep people engaged and committed. It really wasn't an easy thing to convince people to do extra work for months. Same as last year, 20 people signed up but only about 7 steadfast members persevered till the end. Mr. Wilson set a "50 hours" goal for all of us and he constantly checked our progress and made sure we were on schedule – and overall those active members did committed at least 50 hours to the project. We are very proud of that."
The competition, held at the Rahway Recreation Center, began at 10am and was composed of two qualifying rounds, seeding and double elimination rounds. Jerry described the action, "In the seeding rounds, our robots did what we expected despite some accidents (they were unexpected but we solved them effectively), and we scored 4-8-3 in three rounds, taking down rank 13 out of 17 teams. The teams that participated were very talented. There were a lot of good designs. But we were also in good shape since we have many similar designs and ideas as other strong teams.
"In the double elimination rounds, based on seeded standings, our first opponent was Rahway High School, the strongest team; we lost the first round by a lot. However in the second round, fortune was on our side. We surprisingly defeated our opponents and survived the second round. This serendipitous victory really heightened our team morale since we had experienced bad luck in the beginning. In the third round we were beaten by another high school by a minute difference. And this concluded our journey."
The team returned with morale high and a strong feeling of accomplishment. "Overall, we had a good time in New Jersey and were satisfied with what we've done for the past three months," said Jerry. "I was pretty tired, since being a junior myself, I had schoolwork and standardized tests to do. And I know most of us made a lot of sacrifices to work on this project. Botball at the Abbey is a club, after all, not an afternoon activity as in many public schools, so I think it really was a triumph for the first year participating in the competition."
For faculty advisor Dave Wilson, " The best part of it for me was the enthusiasm and rightful pride that they all took from the competition, and the determination that each and every one of them had to come back better next year. Collectively, the students put in hundreds of hours of effort, and everyone felt that it was a good investment of their time. I don't think that you can ask or hope for more than that."
Jerry spoke for his teammates in concluding, "Thank you so much for your dedicated support. We really could not accomplish all of these achievements without the school backing us up. And we believe, with your help, we are creating another Abbey legacy that will be passed on for the future generations."
Congratulations to all!
Top photo, from left, members of the Portsmouth Abbey Robotics team Jerry Lin '16, Alex Barlow '15, Nick Velcea '17, Fen Billings '15, Hansu Kim '16, Nelson Choi '16, Robin Xue '16,Tom Aker '15, and Thomas Knoeppfler '16 and faculty advisor Dave Wilson P '15, '16, '18.
