BU FIRST Robotics Team 246 is made up of more than 20 high school students from Boston University Academy (BUA). The program teaches boys and girls of all grade levels how to build robots with a creative and economic mindset. BU professors and undergraduates from the College of Engineering and UMass Boston serve as mentors in the mechanical and electronic departments.
Team Mentor Emily Stern (ENG’16) discusses design plans with one of the team captains.
Team 246 “Overclocked” is a fitting name based on the amount of work the young students exercise, which includes coding, building parts from scratch, and doing numerous trial runs on a prototype. In the team’s “secret” underground lab, Team 246 is literally piecing together a multifunctional robot for the annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). For this year’s event, the team has six weeks to program a robot to throw, climb, and move about various obstacles.
“I’m ready for a challenge,” said Oliver, one of the senior team captains. The 2016 FRC event is called Stronghold and the biggest challenge for the players is programming their robots to catapult a ball through a small window. “It sounds easy to build an arm,” Oliver said. “There is so much more that goes into the process.”
Senior team members Oliver and Jordan show a prototype of the robot’s arm.
FRC combines “the excitement of sport and the rigors of science and technology.” One task of the competition is playing the “game” and scoring points. Another task is being ready to fix any malfunctions in the robot. Alex, a team mentor, describes the loss of life in a robot as “magic smoke.”
“We call it ‘magic smoke’ because the workings of the robot are the workings of a wizard,” Alex said. “Once a motor stops or a wire breaks, the wizard’s magical power is let out.” If a problem occurs in the robot, the crew must work together to find the issue. The team is also racing the clock.
“With so many parts in the body, it can take some time to locate the problem,” Alex said. “It could cost us an event.”
A model catapult and the FIRST game-regulated ball.
To make sure the robot is in its best shape, it takes time and effort. Team 246 is prepared for anything that could disrupt their work schedule. A major hindrance: the weather. BUA senior and team programmer Jordan talked about the team’s sleepover on the weekend of Blizzard Jonas.
“We were worried about being snowed in,” Jordan said. “To be safe, we packed sleeping bags and camped outside the lab.” The students definitely live by the BUA motto, “Nothing Daunts a Scholar.” Beyond the life of robotics, the Team 246 mentors have built a community of hardworking and thoughtful leaders. That’s success in FIRST.