Black Thunder and Gator Bots Robotics Play Their Best Games

At the FIRST Robotics Detroit District Competition, which took place Friday and Saturday at Wayne State University, Henry Ford Academy made it into the quarterfinals and rookie team made seed 23 at the end of qualifying rounds.

The Gator Bots from Henry Ford Academy were happy with how far their team of 16 students made it and are looking forward to their next match in Livonia starting April 1.

“I think we’ve played well, we’ve made a few mistakes along the way but we’re going to come back stronger at the next competition in two weeks,” lead mentor for the Gator Bots Brian Moorhead said.

There were 39 teams in total participating in the game Logo Motion at the competition. For each qualifying round robots were matched up three to a team or “alliance” and competed against another alliance. Points were scored when robots picked up inflatable tubes with their robotic arms and placed them on raised pegs.

Tubes were in the shapes of triangles, circles and squares–what the FIRST logo is made of–and teams were awarded points according to how many logos they could create. Teams were also given the chance to score points at the end of each round by racing a minibot up a pole.

“It’s a fun game. At first it’s kind of hard to get used to but when you get it, you just get it,” said Jacolby Harvey, 15-year-old sophomore team member of the Gator Bots.

One of the things that Moorhead said his team mastered was placing the tubes on the pegs. The way the arm is designed with the attached claw, the 119.8 pound robot couldn’t lift inflatable tubes up from the floor, but would go to the opposite side of the field to receive tubes through the feeder. It is a slower process Moorhead noted, but they had a high percentage of accuracy.

“We’re happy we went this route because past experience has shown that picking up objects is really difficult and we’d rather be precise and known instead of chasing a tube around the floor,” Moorhead said.

Jody Stark, mother of team member Emma Stark, said she was proud to see the teamwork that their team had. The team was seed 26, and had won four matches and lost eight, but was invited to be one of the 24 teams in the quarterfinals because of what they could offer their alliances.

Black Thunder Strikes Again

After nearly 10 years without a robotics team, Edsel Ford High School got back in the swing of things this year by relaunching a robotics team known as Black Thunder.

Starting the program back up isn’t easy, head mentor Steve Scott said, because they are shortchanged in the mechanical area.

During the qualifying rounds, Black Thunder won five matches and lost five that it played in, placing them in seed 23. However, they were not chosen by the top eight to make it into the quarterfinals.

Still, the event was eye-opening for the students because they had never participated in a robotics competition prior to it.

“We’ve had a lot of problems–every time we’ve turned a corner something else is wrong,” 17-year-old senior team member John Kurlovich said. “We kinda came in here blind without knowing what to expect, so it’s a real big eye-opener to see what these guys are really bringing to the table.”

Black Thunder took a light-weighted approach with their robot, which weighed in at just 76 pounds. They had been trying to use their lightness to make them a bit faster and serve as a defense force because their robot wasn’t quite functional.

“This is their very first meet, so a lot of the bugs are being worked out,” Charlotte Bauer, 52-year-old mother to team member Carson Bauer, said.

Black Thunder’s next competition starts April 1 in Livonia.