Cyber Blue, the PMHS robotics team, has made its mark on Perry, providing aspiring engineers with a great way to experience the working field. This season will be no different as the team’s season kickoff party was Jan. 6.
During this kickoff party, Cyber Blue found out that this year’s robotics challenge, created by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST, is titled “Crescendo.” In this challenge, teams must use their S.T.E.M. skills and knowledge to build a robot that can “Turn Up the Volume” in music-themed tasks. In this competition, the team works for months to build their robot and then joins two other teams to form an alliance. Two alliances face off to see who can get the most points by either placing 12-inch rings, called notes, in a slot on the wall or by shooting them into a 10-foot-tall “speaker.” In the first 15 seconds of the game, the robot competes driverless, and then a team member will take over and try to score as many notes as possible.
Cyber Blue’s first competition, Smoky Mountain Regional, in Knoxville, Tennessee, will take place March 6. Within the last month, the team has been able to test multiple prototypes of their robot and will be ready for the competition if they continue their steady pace.
Andrew Nuetzel, one of the Cyber Blue coach, has high expectations for their first meet. “Our goal would be to be in the top five and be able to pick our alliance or be picked as one of the number one or two alliances,” he said.
The team takes on many different responsibilities during the production of the robot including designing, programming, manufacturing and assembling. Each of these steps has encountered multiple problems that stop the whole robot from being able to move or complete the given tasks. “But this [piece of code], it was just not working at all. And it was very frustrating because, I mean, we were trying everything to figure it out,” sophomore Elliott Bunnel, programmer, said after taking a week to locate a problem.
These kinds of mistakes are crucial to catch, and in the past couple of weeks, the team has had fewer and fewer of these problems.
“I’m feeling very confident because [senior Evan Merrick, programmer, and I have] been able to do a lot of things that we haven’t done before,” Bunnell said.
Cyber Blue is feeling good about what they have accomplished and is starting. “We’ve got more good quality prototypes this year than we ever have before in the past,” Nuetzel said. “And so, hopefully, with those prototypes and a good design plan, that’ll make us have a much better robot in the end.”
While the Smoky Mountain Regional is Cyber Blue’s first competition, it functions more as a benchmark for their robot’s performance rather than a marker of success. After the competition, the team can make necessary changes to the robot and prepare for their next two in-state competitions.
Those two matches can qualify Cyber Blue for the state championship for the 26th year in a row. The team is stronger than ever and ready to take on state!