TJ’s Robotics Club brings home second place at the annual First Robotics Competition.
TJ Robotics Club, from left to right: David Dehmlow, (Teacher) Nick Tussing, Logan Dodd, Steve Barta, and Michael Hein.
From April 8th to the 10th, Seniors David Dehmlow, Steve Barta, Michael Hein, and Logan Dodd made TJ history by receiving second place at the First Robotics Competition at the University of Denver’s Ritchie Center. Not only is this the first year TJ has ever had a robotics club – or even attended a robotics tournament – but the TJ team was also the smallest group out of 45 teams. “We went in with just four people and a mentor,” said Dehmlow. “The biggest team was about 60 people, and all of the other teams had attended the competition many times before. We were definitely at a disadvantage.”
The inception of the Robotic’s Club can be dated back to the beginning of last semester, when Assistant Principal Scott Lessard pitched the idea to Math Teacher Nick Tussing, who decided to become involved immediately. “[Lessard] gave me a great opportunity, and I thought it would be a pretty cool experience,” said Tussing. “So I jumped on it.”
Taking the title of Club Sponsor, Tussing soon began traveling to math, science, and computer related classes in order to recruit a team for the upcoming competition. “Tussing eventually went into our software engineering class with a sign-up sheet for robotics, and we thought it sounded like a good time, so we signed up,” said Dehmlow.
Barta, another avidly recruited student, admits to having little to no robotics knowledge upon signing up for the club. “The learning process was a really big part of our time in the club,” said Barta. “How to program it, how to get the computer set up to talk to it, how to put all the wiring together, how to deal with converting and voltage, all that stuff. Also, we had to go through the 140 page rulebook to find out what we could do and what we couldn’t do. That took a while. We also relied a lot on a reference site they gave us to help players out.”
This learning process included numerous hours of web-surfing, reading, and taking time to gain pointers from a previous robotics team from Regis Jesuit High School. “I don’t have a lot of engineering background, so we actually reached out for help from some other local teams, including even an engineering mentor,” said Tussing. “I really was simply a go-between for them to get help where they needed it.”
Dehmlow, who also acknowledged the team’s lack of robotic knowledge prior to the tournament, also appreciated the helping hand gained from Regis. “Tussing found another team that helped us out a little bit with getting us on the right path, because at first we had no idea what we were doing,” said Dehmlow. “It was really helpful getting tips from the already-successful pros.”
Not only did Tussing present the team with resources intellectually, but he also applied for and received a $1000 grant to be used for materials needed for building the robot. “This was still a pretty low budget,” said Dehmlow. “A lot of the money just came out of our pockets, from us working jobs and all. Everyone tried to pitch in. But knowing what we were doing was the main obstacle, along with money. We didn’t have any of the parts, and we didn’t get the grant until three months after it was supposed to be here, so it all added up to a potential disaster.”
Building the robot, soon to be dubbed “Sparticus,” involved both money and hours of hard work, as the robotics club spent almost every day after school, including sometimes on weekends, challenging their minds and hands in TJ’s room 4. “We didn’t really get started until after Christmas break. We’d known about it in November, but we didn’t make any headway until then,” said Dehmlow. “There were tons of materials we had to get before we could really get going. We used aluminum c-channel for the frame. We used plastic wheels with rubber tread. We also needed a power distribution board, electronics…a bunch of stuff that I had no idea about until we made the robot. We really didn’t think we had any hope of getting the robot done on time.”
Nonetheless, the dedicated team traveled to the Richie Center at DU last week to put their robot to the test, powering through their fears and nervous reactions to the overwhelming environment around them. “It was quite nerve-racking,” said Dehmlow. “You get shaky, your heart starts beating really fast. There were about 2000 people there over the course of three days; that was freaky.”
The team spent the rest of the weekend mostly at DU, taking almost 12 hours every day working on and testing the robot before rounds. However, not all rounds went without setbacks. “We for sure had some technically difficulties,” said Dehmlow. “At one point a gear box fell apart in the middle of a match, so we scrambled to fix that. Then we had some problems with the robotic code, where the motors weren’t working right, and stuff like that. But, somehow, we pulled through and got stuff done.”
The basic setup of the robotic tournament, including both the preliminaries and the finals, was based on placing robots on teams in which they would either play defensively or offensively. In order to accumulate as many points as possible, a team could score during a 15 second autonomous period where the team’s robot would attempt to hang up an “ubber tube.” The following two-minute period allowed teams to manually control their robot, as their robot attempted to put up as many tubes as possible onto two racks – each rack with three rows of pikes – ultimately trying to form the logo of the First Company that hosted the robotics tournament. Any team that gets the logo up doubles its points. Afterward, each team gets ten seconds to deploy their mini-bot up a poll, attempting to reach the top, which is a maximum of 30 points.
Sparticus’s role in this scoring process, throughout the entire tournament, was that of a defender. This meant the team’s robot had to prevent other teams from both scoring and deploying their mini-bot. This also meant TJ’s robot would team up with an offensive robot in order to receive points. “Our robot mainly just pushed other robots around and kept them from scoring,” said Barta. “We actually kept the #1 team from scoring any points in one round.”
The part of the competition that involved manually driving the robot was not simple, considering the need to wirelessly connect the robot to some sort of controller. “Basically, the only way we could manage the robot was wirelessly with their system. When you’re on the field playing the game for the finals, you just plug-in a cable and their system has it set up,” said Barta. “Luckily, they have it programmed so that it can be controlled wirelessly. Otherwise, you just plug the router directly into the computer.”
According to Barta, teamwork was a huge factor in the team’s success during the tournament. “Once we got there on the first day, we had no breaks; we had to get everything together fast. We had no time to say ‘okay guys, we need to do this.’ We had to be organized, and we had to get stuff done fast. We had to all trust each other, so it helped that we all know each other very well. We could talk to one another in the way we needed to; we didn’t need to sugar-coat it. There wasn’t time for ‘pleases’ during the tournament. “
After various rounds between teams – sometimes tripling the size of TJ’s – Sparticus made its way to the finals. “We knew we were getting second or first place once we got into the final match; it was really surprising. We were a first-year team, so we weren’t expecting to get far at all,” said Dehmlow. “We ended up getting picked by the third seed team as their defender, and we were able to bump them up to the finals. I was the driver, and the only team that ever scored on us – at all – was the last team we lost to. But even with them, we cut the points that they usually got in half. Plus, we had some difficulties with another robot on our team.”
Regardless of loosing in the final round, TJ’s robotics team was flabbergasted by the results of the tournament. “It was overwhelming. My voice is hoarse now from all the screaming I did. I was so excited to see how good we were doing,” croaked Barta. “And we didn’t have the best looking robot out there.”
Dehmlow, one of the only team members with his voice still intact following the games, felt similarly about the team’s performance. “We ended up finishing it and having a really good time at the tournament,” said Dehmlow. “We just rose up through the ranks, slow and steady, and somehow took second place, it was amazing.”
In Tussing’s eyes, TJ’s winning of second place was no case of begginer’s luck. “We went in with a good strategy, and executed it pretty well, and overall the results were better than we would have hoped,” stated Tussing.
After an incredibly successful year, TJ’s robotics team hopes to continue the legacy of Sparticus in upcoming years, which will include lots of effort put into recruiting underclassmen. “Sadly the whole team is seniors, but we’re going to try to get an announcement together to recruit some new people,” said Dehmlow. “We’ve got to pass down the torch.”
Following months of rigorous preparation, struggles, and immense technical difficulties, TJ’s first year robotics team followed through and ended up succeeding beyond its wildest hopes. “We went in without a clue, and we went out with a trophy,” said Dehmlow. “I would really call this a Cinderella story.”
