STMHS Robotics Team Hopes For Win This Weekend

is something of a rookie in Connecticut’s regional showdown of the FIRST Robotics Competition, but members hope they can excel at this weekend’s competition.

The Connecticut competition has been taking place for 18 years, but this is only the second year the STEM Whalers team has taken part in it.

“The competition is one of the most fun parts of being in robotics,” said Chris Mones, a sophomore in the club.

The FIRST—For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology—competition this year will put three schools together for rounds lasting two minutes and 15 seconds. During this time, the teams will try to shoot foam basketballs at a series of hoops, with more points being awarded the higher a basket is; bonus points are also awarded if the robots are balanced on teeter-totter types of bridges in the middle of the playing field at the end of the round. The robots of three other teams will try to prevent the baskets.

Anna Mercurio, a physics teacher and coach with the team, said the reason for having three robots on the field is to encourage cooperation to achieve the challenge’s goal.

“It’s really kind of hard to make a robot that does it all,” she said.

The cooperative aspect also extends to the operation of the STEM Whalers robot itself. Mones said two people are needed to operate the robot—a driver for the base of the machine and a controller for the upper portion—while there is also a spotter to help instruct what needs to be done on the field and a person who throws in the needed competition pieces, such as the basketballs in this year’s event.

The club itself has people dedicated to building and driving the robot, as well as programmers for the software component of the robot. The STEM Whalers robot includes a wood and plastic frame as well as a bin to hold the basketballs.

Teams have six weeks to build and test out their robots. Lily Comfort, a senior with the club, said the STMHS team did some practicing at a robotics setup at Fitch High School. She said the preparation is a lot of work, with the team doing tests on weekends. Sometimes “blood, sweat, and tears” is an adequate description.

“I still have a scar from that robot,” said Comfort.

Mercurio said 4H and JC Penney are major sponsors of the club, which has to do fundraising to cover travel and equipment expenses.

“The kit itself costs several thousand dollars, just to purchase the parts and join the team,” she said.

The event is open to the public and takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday at the Connecticut Convention Center.

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