NEWS Walnut Valley Unified School District
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 880 S. Lemon Avenue
April 1, 2011 Walnut, CA 91789
Contact:
Kelli Gile, Office of Community Resources
(909) 595-1261 ext. 31204
Sprockets Robotics Team Takes FIRST Place
DIAMOND BAR, CA--The Diamond Bar High School FIRST Robotics Team took top honors this past weekend at the Los Angeles Regional competition in the Long Beach Convention Center.
Their first place finish earned them a spot in the National Finals in St. Louis at the end of April.
Student-built robots battled it out at on March 25 and 26. The fierce competition between 63 high school teams from across California and as far away as Chile. Students from three California schools -- South High School, Torrance; West Covina High School, West Covina; and Diamond Bar High School, Diamond Bar, won the overall regional competition.
The winners will represent the Los Angeles region at the FIRST championships April 27 to 30 in St. Louis, where they will compete against 51,000 other students on more than 2,000 teams.
The Diamond Bar High Sprockets Team took 15 team members to competition.
Senior Asad Akbany designed the vital machinery and was the main person working on the arm and one of the four members of the drive team.
“This was the best experience I’ve had in my four years of high school. I was taking what I’d learned in the class and then applying it to build a functioning robot,” Akbany said.
Four students make up the Drive Team with the robot controls: Asad Akbany and Ayzaan Wahidm - Robot Drivers; Brandon Sim - Coach; and Chris Lee - Human Player who puts the game pieces into play during each competition.
Students formed the Sprockets team for the competition with students Brandon Sim, Ayzaan Wahid, Orson Ou and Ray Pang. Over 30 candidates vied for a spot on the new school team. 16 were chosen by advisor Lynn Wan who expected them to show up every day to work on the project.
The dedicated rookies built the robot in six weeks from a kit of parts working up to five hours a day after school. They knew they needed to construct a winning robot as they would be competing with the best robots from schools with sponsors including JPL and NASA.
The Diamond Bar team impressively raised $19,000 from JC Penney, Raytheon, Brahma and Walnut Valley Educational Foundation and the Walnut Valley Unified School District.
Students named their robot RoboKoP because the robot parts kit was named KoP. The creation is 3-foot wide and featured an arm that reaches 10 foot high when fully extended.
And the rookies enlisted help from team of students from Harvey Mudd College and Raytheon to ensure the structure was sound before the competition.
“The Harvey Mudd students had a lot of experience and gave us a lot of strategies. Without them we wouldn’t have gone as far as we did,” said Akbany.
The hardest part of the challenge was building a mini bot that had to deploy at the end of a match, Akbany said. It had to sit on the robot and then race up a pole with other mini bots.
The Sprockets Team even had a scouting team that stayed in the pit to check out the competition between their matches.
The goal of the "Logo Motion" game this year was to hang as many plastic shapes (triangles, circles and squares) on the scoring grid in a two-minute-and-15 second match. The higher the teams hung their game pieces on their scoring grid, the more points their teams would receive. The robots could also deploy mini-bots to climb vertical poles for a chance to earn additional points.
This is the 20th season of the Los Angeles regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.
The FIRST program was founded to encourage students to pursue careers in science and technology through robotics competitions. With the help of engineers from JPL, aerospace and other companies and institutions of higher education, FIRST continues to grow and inspire students.
“It was so much fun,” said JPL spokesman Priscilla Vega. She said the 3-day competition was “a combination sporting event and science fair.” Some schools even brought their own mascot!
Photo:
1. The DBHS Robotics Team Sprocket was the Winner of the 2011 Los Angeles Regional FIRST Robotics Competition. Team members include: Brandon Sim, Chris Lee, Anthony Jin, David Tran, John Kim, Arthur Teng, Curtis Wang, Shannon Fan, Lavanya Jawaharlal, Rebecca Wu, Orson Ou, Ian Pan, Asad Akbany, Ayzaan Wahid, Hoi Wong, and Ray Pang.
2. Teams battled it out at the FIRST robotic competition on March 25-26. The Diamond Bar High robot (shown with blue bumpers, team # 3473) won the regional contest and now advances to the National championships in St. Louis.
Student-built robots battled it out on March 25 and 26, 2011, at the FIRST Regional Robotics Competition in Long Beach, Calif. The goal of the "Logo Motion" game this year was to hang as many plastic shapes (triangles, circles and squares) on the scoring grid in a two-minute-and-15 second match. The higher the teams hung their game pieces on their scoring grid, the more points their teams would receive. The robots could also deploy mini-bots to climb vertical poles for a chance to earn additional points. Photos courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.