Archive: Around Town

The Lansing Robotics team faced its most difficult challenges this year, and most satisfying rewards.  The team built and programmed its robot to compete in FIRST Tech Challenge competitions in the region state and a competition in Pennsylvania.  They brought their creation to Monday's Board Of Education meeting to talk about the year's achievements and plans for the future.

"This is our third year and it's the best we've ever done despite all the challenges that we have had to take on, like new programs, new materials, new rules, and new team mates," Team President Amanda Van said.  "After this season the Lansing Bobcats Team 7743 are no longer considered underdogs.  We've cemented ourselves as a really solid team that is a really big threat now."

The core activity is competing in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) competitions.  Teams compete on local, regional and state levels.  

Depending on the region, teams compete for from nine to 12 trophies.  This year Lansing won three.  The team won the Control award for best programming at a competition in Pennsylvania, where their robot placed 7th out of 24 teams.  They also won the Connect Award for community outreach, and the Think Award for most innovative design and best documented process.  That led the team to the state competition.

"We did the best at States than we have ever done," Van said.  "We dominated fairly well.  We placed 11th against the best teams in the region."

The team initiated and participated in a number of events in addition to the FTC competition.  Team members ran a summer camp for middle and elementary school students.  They also held a class in this year's STEAM event, using Lego Mindstorm kits with which students could build and program robots.  More recently the team hosted two discussion forums on C-Day.  Participants had to brainstorm to solve a problem as a team, then receive constructive criticism on their process.  The point was to generate interest in joining next years robotics team, but also yielded a competition Outreach trophy.


The team also competed in the Life Changing Labs (LCL) Makeathon competition, a 24 hour engineering challenge.  While originally set up to judge high school and college teams in separate groups, high school competitors petitioned to be judged in the same category.  As it turned out they were able competitors.

"The Lansing team came in second overall, beating out all the college teams," Van told the school board.

An Ithaca High School team took top honors with their P!LLPAL invention, a bracelet that both stores medication and reminds the wearer to take it at the proper time.  Lansing High School won for Instalert, which sends alarms and text messages when children open cabinets with hazardous contents.  Members of the two winning high school teams received $500 scholarships to LCL's high school summer program.  LCL is a non-profit organization run by Cornell students.

Van said that even in its third year, this year's team was effectively a new one that had new and difficult challenges to meet.

"There are only three of us who were on last year's team," Van said.  "We had experience, but it wasn't a super grand lot of experience.  So it was OK working from scratch and building back up again.  This year was a complete curveball in terms of difficulty.  It went from just taking balls and dropping them in tubes to climbing the face of a mountain.  The programming language was different this year, as well.  We had to buy all new equipment and we had to start at square one.  It was refreshing, because we are mostly a new team."

The team is already planning for next year.  Members will repeat the robotics camp again this summer, and the team is actively recruiting new members for next school year.  All high school students are eligible to participate.

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