Ballard High School to compete in regional robotics competition

The Ballard High School Robotics Club has been working hard for the past few months. They’ve been creating a basketball-playing robot that will compete in next week’s regional FIRST Robotics competition.

Joseph Kaiser, a senior, is Head of Programming on the Robotics team. He’s been on the team for three years, and this year is helping to create a robot that can shoot basketballs. He says the robot has to pick up the basketballs, and shoot them into hoops of three different levels. The lowest is worth one point, the middle hoop is two points, and the highest in three points. The robot then has to balance on a bridge with another robot. Their robot will compete on a team with another school’s robot, and will go on in the competition based on baskets made and balancing ability.

The robot pictured above the practice ‘bot. The robot they’ll use in the competition is covered in plastic and sitting in the corner of the room. The team worked feverishly for six weeks to create that robot, and aren’t allowed to make changes to it until the first day of the competition. The practice robot allows the team to work out the kinks in order to make final changes. Kaiser said the team is only allowed to bring 30 pounds fabricated parts to make adjustments to the final competing robot.

Craig Nielsen is the coach and mentor for the Robotics Club. He’s been running the program for four years, and is an engineering teacher at the high school. As we sit in a corner of the school’s engineering shop, his voice is nearly drowned out by the excited voices of the club members, who are working hard to ready the robot for competition next Thursday. The room is full of mostly teenage boys; just two girls are there to help with the final adjustments. Nielson says it’s likely they’ll be there all weekend, too.

Nielsen says they’re down to the wire to get the final changes made. I asked him what he enjoys about the club. “Oh my,” Nielsen said. “Right now I’m pretty tired,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know where to start. There’s a ton of joy I get out of it, seeing success in so many different ways. The kids grow and mature exponentially just because of this. Watching what it does for the kids is probably the most gratifying.”

The team will compete in the regional competition on March 22, 23, and 24. March 22 is the day to make the final changes to their robot, and the following two days are the actual competition days.