As building plans for the new, state-of-the-art
Providence Career + Technical Academy nears its final stages of
completion, a group of students at Hanley Tech are gearing up
their brains for the move. The Hanley Robotics Team,
formed last year, has already made a name for itself in the highly
competitive arena of FIRST robotics competitions. The
organization FIRST, “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science
and Technology”, was founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen and
has been the conduit for these local, nationwide, and
international robotics design contests.
This past March the 10-member team at Hanley participated
in their first statewide competition at New England Tech,
garnering the coveted Innovative Award for most creative design,
as well as a 2nd place Winning Alliance Prize that guaranteed them
a slot in the US FIRST World Tournament in Atlanta this
April. In Atlanta, they came in 50th out of 100 high school
teams throughout the world.
Accomplishing this impressive feat took a lot of
dedication and hard work on the part of Team RhodeBots, comprised
of tenth graders Ricky Saquic, Alejandro Garcia, Ariel Betances,
and Rayhan Reyes; and ninth graders Carlos Hernandez, Jonathan
Caceres, Kevin Tunchez, Rudy Gramajo, Dary Lopez, and James
Sonevong. City News caught up with this group of young,
aspiring engineers and scientists to pick their brains about their
winning design.
How did you form this team?
Rayhan:
My friend Ricky told us about the robotics team last year and we
got together and decided we’d try to build another robot and
compete again.
Ricky: Last year, I was technically the only member of
the robotics team. There were two other students involved
but weren’t as committed. So I asked Alejandro to ask our
principal Mr. Torres if he still wanted to continue. Mr.
Torres told me to rally up some other students to make our own
robotics team. The first year we actually competed, but not
officially, because we received our kit two weeks before the
competition. So we didn’t have enough time to build the
robot and practice with it. So we just went and showed our
good sportsmanship and just cheered for other teams. We went
to get a sense of what the competition was all about.
What was your winning project all about? (Or what
are some of the team challenges you had to
meet?)
Carlos: The first day that we started building
the robot we actually didn’t have an idea. We just started
to build using the pieces we had. We began with a rectangle
for the structure and from that point on the team started to get
used to building stuff and then we started
to come up
with our ideas. We came up with a robot that acts like a
dump truck. It has a mechanical arm, which lifts up at a
90-degree angle and on top of it is a tray switch. It goes
down to a 45-degree angle and drops down to a scoring area.
Alejandro: The scoring area is an area where your robot
had to pick up a puck, like the ones they use in hockey. So
the triangular area was worth some points and the circular area
was worth another few points. In the end, I think we
actually had the most unique design. No other team had a
dump truck concept like ours.
How did you come up with the dump truck
idea?
Ricky: First, everybody wanted to build
something that I saw but that many others probably would have
thought of, which was an arm and a tray that would be able to come
back and forth to grab the puck. Then we all sat together
and we considered planning it out as we went along. During
the competition, we had to do a journal, which contained entries
about our problems, our technical difficulties, how we tackled
those issues and made them better. So that’s what we
did.
What do you have to do to prepare for these kinds
of competitions?
Jonathan: We had to make sure that we
knew about the software of the robot and that we actually knew how
to control the robot. The drivers, two people from our team,
had to practice a lot to make sure they got the controls
straight. Preparing for competition here in RI, we practiced
so that if something broke during competition we knew how to fix
it right then and there. It was a lot to prepare for –
making sure the drivers were there, the guys were there, the
drivers were ready, and the parts were there. Up to the
competition, everything went well.
How long did you have to prepare for
this?
Jonathan: We met about 3 times a week, and even
Saturdays sometimes and one Sunday, for at least 2 to 4
hours. We started back in January, just thinking about a
robot to design, but we didn’t have the robot yet. We did
have some good planning in place though before we built the
robot. Then in March we competed at the State tournament and
took home the winning alliance prize and the Innovative Award like
Ricky said.
Now when you moved on to the world championships
in Atlanta in April did you have to design a new
robot?
Carlos: We did not have to make a new robot but
we thought that if we renovated our robot, we definitely had to
make it better so that it would score better.
Ricky: In the end, we came in 50th place out of 100 at
the world championships, which is pretty good. Unfortunately, we
didn’t do as well as we thought. The reason being we had
many difficulties with the technology.
What about the field of robotics (or, science and
engineering) interests you the most?
Kevin: I learned
about robotics from my Algebra teacher. I wasn’t really
interested in it at first but when I saw the kit come in, I wanted
to be part of it and see if I could build something on my own. I
was getting a little frustrated in the beginning because we
weren’t coming up with anything so I was gonna’ quit. But
after we got some help from Mike, who took some time off from his
own robotics team to mentor us, and we started to make progress, I
stayed. I joined because I always liked technology and so
joining this extracurricular activity would help me improve.
I wanted to learn more about it.
James: I like to build things and I wanted to try
building a robot, get into some of the engineering of it.
Ricky: I love electrical engineering. That’s
my passion. That’s the career I want for my future.
Basically, I’m starting now to get some merit aid for
college.
Carlos: Robotics is something new for a lot of us.
It’s something different and we want to try it. For our team
to be able to build a robot on our own and compete in national and
world tournaments, that to me, is impressive in itself.
Alejandro: I was one of the programmers of the
robot. I wanted to be a part of this because I’m really into
programming. I’ve been programming computers since I was
little. So this was a chance to do some of that in a team
setting.
What did you learn from this
experience?
Rudy: I learned that everything’s not
about winning, it’s also about helping others. I also
learned a little more about engineering.
Rayhan: I learned that sometimes it gets frustrating to
build a robot with the whole team. But after awhile, once we
learned how to do it, took our time, it got better.
Carlos: Some of us actually come to school just to go to
the after school program for robotics. We could have stayed
home, or do nothing, but we actually come to school because that’s
how much we like it.
What was your reaction when you
won?Alejandro: I was excited.
Carlos: I was very, very happy. I went home
jumping. I told my mom, my whole family, everybody.
None of them thought we could do it or go as far as we did.
But we actually did. And I definitely plan to do this again
next year.
Ricky: When my family heard that we beat schools that
were beyond popular, like Cranston East and so on, they were
shocked that a little school like ours (which is temporarily
housed in an elementary school) would come up and rise to such an
achievement. When my sister came to watch the competition at
New England Tech, she saw how much fun our team was having.
When I told I her I went to the US FIRST website and they
announced that they opened a competition for elementary schools,
she was so excited that the next day she went and asked her
principal to see if they wanted to participate in it. It’s
really cool to me.
Pretty soon, you guys will be moving in to the
new Providence Career + Technical Academy campus on Fricker
Street. How do guys feel about that?
Jonathan:
That building is going to give us the great opportunity to learn
about vocations, technology and new careers for all of the
students of Providence. We are very excited to go to that
state-of-the-art building to learn all that we can learn.
That school is one of the most modern schools in the City of
Providence, maybe even in the State or beyond. It’s huge –
it’s next to the school department and the other two high schools,
Classical and Central. It’s a going to be like a little
school community that is going to get completed with the opening
of our new technical school. Technically, we are the first
students in Providence to have this new building. So we’re
very excited. From the outside it looks great and so I hope
that it will look just as great on the inside.
How do you see the role of robotics playing out
in your generation, in the future of this
society?
Jonathan: Since the early 90s, technology has
boosted up to amazing levels. There’s technology
everywhere. We have gone from computers that are the size of
this room to computers that we can now hold in our hands.
Robotics will help kids in this generation learn technology so we
can function better in the society of the future. The
society of the future is basically gonna’ run on technology and
technological influences.
Carlos: The Mayor recently went with us to Miriam
Hospital, where we got to see the DaVinci Robot at work. It’s
basically a robot that could perform surgery. So here you
have a robot that saves lives and that is something that affects
our society and our generation in a big way.
What’s next for your team?
Ricky: I
see big, big, and even bigger accomplishments for every single one
of us in the future. This year, we competed in the FTC
league, which stands for First Tech Challenge and next year, we’re
planning to compete in the FRC, which stands for First Robotics
Challenge. The FRC involves really big robots that stand
6-feet tall by 5-feet around.
Kevin: For anyone who’s gonna’ be reading this, I want to
make sure that you tell your schools about robotics and have them
compete for the upcoming years.
Alejandro: And we thank our principal Mr. Torres for all
his support. He’s the best principal ever. He supports
us a lot.
Rudy: We also want to thank Mickey Oliver from Nipro
Corporation for being our mentor. He taught us a lot.
The other one is Mike DiSouza, who is a college student.
They came in several times a week to teach us the basics of
programming, engineering, and design. They volunteered for
us. We thank them a lot for all their help.
Carlos: We love robotics and we know that you will
too.
Coach, what are some of the life lessons you
think your students are learning by participating in activities
like this?
Ms. Rickert: I’m the school-based
coordinator, acting as their coach. From my perspective,
I’ve seen tremendous personal growth in all of them, especially
since all of these boys competed with only one kit and one robot
against many schools that had two kits so they could build these
enormous robots. I saw them come together as a team working
nights and weekends so that they could build a successful,
well-designed robot on a very, very small budget and they
prevailed! It’s unbelievable how well they did with their
designs. Their maturity, their confidence levels, and their
grades have gone up. It’s just been astounding. Next
year, they’ll be mentoring 9th graders and hopefully starting up a
middle school program or team as well.
For Providence too, which is now known as the Creative
Capital, this team really represents that spirit because we won
the Innovative Award for building the most creative robot – and if
that doesn’t speak to what the creative capital is all about, I
don’t know what does.
The annual
school-performance classifications are based on results of the
2008-09 state tests in mathematics, reading, and writing as well
as the 2007-08 attendance and four-year graduation rates. Schools
meeting all of their targets are described as having “Met AYP,”
short for Adequate Yearly Progress. Providence’s DelSesto Middle
School was chosen by the Rhode Island Department of Education as
the site of the announcement in recognition of the progress made
in Providence and other urban districts, and to celebrate the fact
that DelSesto, Esek Hopkins Middle School and Webster Avenue
Elementary School each met AYP for two consecutive years and are
now removed from the state’s intervention status.
This Tuesday,
May 26th, Mayor Cicilline joined architect and developer Peter
Gill Case of Truth Box, Inc. in a groundbreaking ceremony for the
city’s newest sustainable development project. When
completed, the 10,000 square-foot Box Office will house 12 office
and studio spaces constructed from 32 recycled shipping containers
located on an abandoned strip on Harris Avenue.
