Robotics team ‘inspires’ in first year competing

The Say Watt? For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) robotics team, which consists of 10 area high school students, pose with Bounty Hunter, the robot they built. The team has competed in three competitions since September, and all three times they have won the Inspire Award. The team is set to compete in the World Championship event in Atlanta, Ga., April 14-17. PHOTO COURTESY OF BIJAL PAREKH It may be their rookie year, but members of the Say Watt? robotics team feel like veterans as they prepare to compete in the world championship next month.

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition will be held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga., April 14-17.

Since September, the Edison-based team has competed in competitions in New Jersey, Delaware and New York, winning the Inspire Award all three times.

“It’s the ultimate award,” said member Frankie Carr, 14, of Edison, a freshman at the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies, in Edison.

The Inspire Award is the most prestigious FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) honor, and in a competition is given to the team that truly embodies the challenge of the FTC program, which is for students in grades nine through 12. The judges give the award to the team that has best represented a role model FIRST Tech Challenge Team.

The team competed in a fourth competition in Weatherly, Pa., on Saturday; how- ever, since it had won the Inspire Award three times already, the team was not allowed to compete for it again.

“We went to the competition just for practice,” said Kaushal Parikh, 16, of East Brunswick, a junior at the Middlesex academy.

Parikh said that when he joined the team, he “did not know what he was getting himself into.”

“I went into it thinking, ‘OK, we are all rookies together this year on this team, and I’d be happy if we just qualify.’And it turns out we did it three times,” he said.

The team of 10 members — Carr, Parikh, Jon Silvestri of Edison, Nathan Rutter of Metuchen, Arnav Gulati of Monroe, Subhashina Chandrasekaran of Edison, Eric Jeney of Metuchen, Yash Parekh of Monroe, Sergey Gerstein of Old Bridge and Pronoy Biswas of Edison — came together in August.

The team is not affiliated with the technology academy, though nine of its members attend the school. Rutter is home-schooled.

At a September kickoff event at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, the team learned of this year’s game, which challenges students to create a robot that can pick up Wiffle balls and throw them into a high net goal and a low goal. Members said every team finds out the game simultaneously and then attends training workshops.

Once apprised of the game, the team received a robot kit consisting of a pile of parts. Their responsibility was to design, build and program a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams.

The students apply real-world math and science concepts and develop problem-solving, organizational and team-building skills.

“We learned the concepts in the classes from school,” Jeney said.

The team also was responsible for building the sports model, which consists of a field and net goals. This is stored in the basement of Parikh’s home.

“There were a lot of trips to Home Depot,” Carr’s mother, Stella, noted with a laugh.

The team is allowed to use additional materials, but it is limited by the FIRST rules.

“We don’t have to use all the parts that are given to us,” Parikh explained.

Carr said the team used additional LEGO parts and bent the metal that was provided, because “everything that was given to us is in 90- degree angles.”

Ideas started flowing once the members learned more about the game, and within three or four weeks, they had formed their strategy.

“We split up in subgroups and then tested our ideas on the first model we built,” said Parikh. “Then we made the model that we use to compete.”

Eric Jeney, 16, a sophomore, said the team is always changing the robot, in the hope of perfecting it.

“It’s never-ending,” he said.

Silvestri, 16, a junior at the academy, who named the team’s robot “Bounty Hunter,” said it looked pretty bad at first.

“Metal and piping were sticking out,” he said. Now, however, “our robot looks pretty intimidating.”

The team said it would not have gotten so far without its mentor and coach, Jim Carr, who is Frankie’s father and a former engineer.

“I’m here to provide help, but this [program] is all about the kids doing the work,” he said. “This program’s goal is to get people interested in engineering.”

Stella Carr added that there is another benefit.

“Building robots is fun,” she said.

Robotics runs in the Carr family, with Frankie on the FTC team, his sisters Colee, 12, and Cassie, 10, on the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team (for grades four through eight) and his younger brother, William, 6, participating in the Junior FIRST LEGO League.

“William is the FTC’s mascot,” Stella said with a smile.

Colee said she enjoys being on the FLL team.

“I met a lot of friends and it’s exciting,” she said, adding that “with all the new technology with the use of robots, it is very important to learn to use them.”

In conjunction with participating in the four major tournaments, the team has and traveled to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City and the Sun National Bank Center in Trenton to conduct seminars about the robotics team.

“We let the children play and control our first prototype robot that we built,” said Parikh.

The team members said they plan to hunker down during their spring break to perfect the Bounty Hunter before they head into the national championships in Atlanta, where they will compete with 100 teams from the U.S. and other countries.

“We’re pretty excited and we look forward to the competition.… We think we can handle it,” said Jeney, adding that they are also excited because there will be college scouts at the competition.

The students on the robotics team are eligible for $7 million in college scholarships this year, ranging from $500 to full tuition for four years.

FIRST, which is based in Manchester, N.H., was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology by engaging them in mentorbased programs that build science, engineering and technology skills.