International School wins 2012 FIRST Robotics regional competition
Published 12:10 pm Sunday, April 8, 2012
Bellevue’s International School Titan Robotics Club and their alliance partners, Tahoma Senior High School and Camas, Washougal, Hockinson & Hayes Freedom High Schools, won the FIRST Robotics Cascade Regional final matches on March 24.
The competition emulated the NCAA March Madness with 3-point baskets, roaring fans, and dancing mascots.
“I am so proud of this team,” said Amy McIvor, Lead Mentor. “The students worked really hard to get us ready for regionals. We are a small team, so everyone put in long hours to build and program the robot.”
The competition consisted of ever-changing three-team alliances with robots designed to shoot and defend baskets, rebound balls and balance on “seesaw” bridges. Robots start the competition in hybrid mode, driven autonomously by programmed commands or by human motions tracked by the Kinect from Microsoft. After 15 seconds, drivers control the robots for the remaining 2 minutes of play.
“Our robot performed really well; the mechanical and software teams did great. This was our first time truly operating the real robot, as opposed to the practice one, so Paul (robot mechanism operator) and I just had to cram in as much practice during competition as possible.”” said International School robot driver, Da-Hee Im.
During the two-day simultaneous Cascade and Olympic Regionals, 96 robotics teams from Washington, Oregon, California, Mexico and Turkey competed in qualifying rounds. The Bellevue School District was represented by Bellevue High, Interlake High, International, Newport High and Sammamish High. Four of the five Bellevue teams advanced to the regional playoff matches.
The Cascade Regional victory qualifies International School’s team for the 2012 FIRST Robotics World Championships in St. Louis, MO, April 26-28. The next challenge for the team is to raise $6,000 to pay for the championship entry fee and raise additional funds to support students who are not able to afford the travel expenses.
More information is available at contact amy@titanrobotics.net.
