It’s rare to become a world champion of anything. Let alone at the age of 16.
But for Kevin Tam, Isaku Kamada and the rest of Team W.A.S.A.B.I. 2, that became a reality when the squad took home the world championship, beating out more than 400 other teams from 16 countries last weekend at the 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida.
Though many of the W.A.S.A.B.I. eight team members – seven are from Interlake High School, with another from the International School – are veterans of robotics, a sport that involves building and controlling robots in games that change each year, they hardly expected to take home the title in their first year together.
“I personally didn’t think we would get close to where we did,” said Interlake High School sophomore Kevin Tam, one of the team’s co-captains. “None of us were expecting that.”
When the team made it to the finals that weekend by winning one of the four divisions, each with more than 100 teams, it still wasn’t real for them. But as fans filled the arena, the lights dimmed, lasers flashed and a booming announce team called the finals, it became clear that W.A.S.A.B.I. was a team to be reckoned with.
This year’s test was called round up. The teams partner up for a two-on-two battle, and robots venture around the 12-foot-by-12-foot ring to collect rings and place them on a scoring post. Teams can also attempt to remove the opponents’ rings so they lose points. Much strategy and innovation comes into play between the designing of the robots, and understanding the game.
Matches are best of three rounds with two minutes apiece in which two drivers, and one coach for each team directs their bots to collect as many rings as possible.
When Team W.A.S.A.B.I. reached the final match, the nerves were at an all-time high. This particular robot, later titled Winbot, had not lost a match at the competition, but the team’s other bot Funbot was defeated earlier in the tournament by a faulty battery.
The team was meticulous, almost obsessive checking every single piece of the bot heading into the finals, and it paid off.
“Until the very last minute we were checking on it,” said Kamada, also a sophomore at Interlake. “We had to make sure that robot is going to work on that field.”
The robot functioned, the team put on a brilliant performance and won the first round. They then had to switch and allow another team to step into the second round, and that partnership was victorious as well.
The win for the team represented years of work for many of the players and coaches. The team’s mentor, David Zook, has been involved with robotics for years with his son. Tam developed his interest in 6th grade. He put together W.A.S.A.B.I. this past year using several kids he’s worked with before. Team members have been meeting since August, for about 10-12 hours a week to work on the robots, Zook said. They competed in five tournaments throughout the region, and they had the chance to tinker with their robots before the big show. The Winbot showed prowess early on. It used a needle to poke through the holes of the rings and hold onto them. The Funbot was more of a gamble said Tam, who captained that portion of the team. It used a cylindrical device to pick up the rings.
The bots’ biggest advantage was mobility. The chassis system and wheel placement allowed the bot to change directions without having to turn around, creating a speed advantage in many cases.
For many of the players, the main draw of robotics is real world application of the skills and theories they are learning in school. Tam said many of the team members are taking advance physics and mathematics, and robotics gives them a chance to apply those skills. Zook, the team’s mentor, said this level of experience is very rare.
“A lot of these kids are very book smart with virtually no practical real world experience,” he said. “They’ve never really built anything by hand. Just getting their fingers dirty, and dusting their knuckles up has been a great thing for all of them.”
The team
Akash Gupta, Grace Hsieh, Isaku Kamada, Kevin Tam, Julie Eng, Kevin Li, Ryan Badiee and Zane Zook
