Elkton Students and Their Robot Make Their First-Ever World Tournament Appearance
By Craig Reed
The Cybernetic Elks have enjoyed a record year.
For the first time, the Elkton High School club, established in 2011, qualified its robot for the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship Tournament. The team competed in the world event in Houston, Texas, in late April. It placed 173rd out of 378 teams.
5 students are on the Elkton team: Zeke Humber, senior and team captain; Jessica Hawkinson, senior and outreach specialist; Loren Smith, junior and mechanical engineer; Nate Humber, sophomore and lead programmer; and Debra Flick, 6th grader and second programmer. Cynde Pakros and Ed Humber coach the team. The students named their robot Ballistic.
The mission of the club is to “teach our students how they can be the change they want to see in the world.”
The students research industry robots, industrial machines, and other robotic ideas to see what mechanical designs are successful and to see if they can adapt or improve on them to meet each year’s new challenge. This year’s challenge was to build a robot able to roll over and pick up plastic balls, 1 at a time for a load of 3, and then shoot them out of its top at an elevated catch target.
The students began building their robot in September and had 10 weeks to complete it before their first competition against other Southern Oregon teams. Competition robots can be programmed to retrieve and shoot balls on their own, or can be operated remotely by a student with a controller.
Ballistic and the team are judged on how quickly balls are picked up and accurately shot in a 2-minute period. The team can earn bonus points if the robot picks up the colored balls in a designated order. The robot can also play defense, preventing opposing robots from securing and shooting the balls.
Elkton was ranked first of the 21 teams in the Southern Oregon League, then won the district tournament to advance to the Oregon State FIRST Tech Challenge Championship in February. The team finished second to earn the world tournament berth.
FIRST is an acronym: “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” There are 8,000 registered FIRST Tech teams around the world.
“For a small rural team from Elkton, this is something we are incredibly proud of,” Cynde says. “We had the honor of representing Oregon on the international stage, competing alongside some of the best teams in the world. We’re coming home more motivated, inspired and fired up than ever for next season.”
Zeke says the team was surprised to qualify for the world event, but then was disappointed it couldn’t advance out of the qualifying rounds and place higher.
“We were happy to be there,” he says. “I’ve been looking at teams who are consistently at the world event. To be able to see them compete and to compete with them was fun.”
Nate describes the world tourney as “an eye-opener with all that was going on.” “With all the teams there and all the competition, it was pretty cool to see the robots you had seen on YouTube in person,” he says.
Debra describes the experience of seeing students and robots from all over the world as “amazing.”
Jessica wrote about the experiences she had over the past 7 years since walking into the robotics lab.
“As a graduating senior, I look back on a journey filled with unforgettable milestones,” she says. “From being honored with the Dean’s List award during my sophomore year to serving proudly as our team’s outreach specialist, FIRST has given me a purpose. My role allowed me to share our passion for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) with the community, proving that robotics is about building people, not just machines.
“We capped off this incredible 7-year chapter in the best way possible. Our team made it to the world championship, where we competed against the best in the world and ranked incredibly well. I love FIRST Robotics because it is more than a competition. It is a family, a launchpad for future leaders, and the place where I found my voice.”
Loren also wrote down his thoughts. “What the world meant to me was accomplishing a vision,” he says. “In our old room where we worked on the robot years ago, we wrote, ‘Team goal: Make a world championship team.’ That sat on the whiteboard as we worked on the robot year in and year out.
“When we finally did it, it was like finishing a book you’ve been meaning to read for a long time. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Cynde says she was proud of the team, especially Zeke and Jessica, the 2 seniors.
“We’ve had crazy failures, but we learned from those,” Cynde says. “This was their year to take the lead from everything they’ve learned to design and build this robot. What you hope is for them to trust their abilities and that they’ve built enough confidence to know how to strategize, build, and succeed. They have.”
Cynde says the team received great support from several businesses, including Douglas Electric Cooperative, whose donations helped with the expense of building the robot, travel to events in the state and the trip to Houston.