Huntington Robotics Ready for Regional Competitions

Huntington Robotics is cruising through the winter build season. It’s been a very busy time, but no challenge has been insurmountable for the Blue Devils. A recent message to Huntington School Board members and district executives provided an update on the status of the season.

Written by team captain Jaipreet Singh and safety captain and head of maintenance Jake Chiclacos, the update communication summarized the team’s efforts heading into this past Sunday’s Regal Eagle Rampage at Bethpage. The event gave the Blue Devils valuable practice time before upcoming regional competitions.

“It truly has been a busy last few weeks of build season,” wrote Messrs. Singh and Chiclacos. “During those weeks, we completely cadded (computer-aided design) the robot and made modifications to those plans. Over the weeks, changes were made to our coral release mechanism, algae intake and climber subsystem. The climber itself was redesigned using cad over the last week of the season as the primary version did not function to our standards. Directly after the last update, we began creating the elements of the robot out of metal, and eventually mounted them to the robot. The elevator, algae intake, coral release mechanism, chassis, and human-station feeder were all made and finished between the fourth and fifth week of the season. From there, we focused on the electrical and pneumatic aspects to connect each subsystem together. This pertains to mounting the cylinders, running pneumatic lines, neatly running extension wires from each motor, and connecting all electrical hubs.”

A series of small issues remained and were addressed. “These smaller things were the climber being overweight by about three pounds, mounting pneumatic tanks and needing covers on the electrical/chain guards,” according to the update. “We did meet two days over break to help tie up those loose ends and a majority of it got done. Overall, we are in a great place for competitions this year. Focusing on the programming side, we have code that allows us to run the robot using the controllers thanks to the effort of our students and mentors before and during the winter break. A new system called Pathfinder was experimented with as well to allow making an autonomous route much simpler.”

Last week was especially busy with Monday being last day for students to retake the drive test. “Members must pass with an 85 percent or higher in order to take the second driving part,” according to the report sent to school officials. “This was also the last day to really make changes to the robot. The driver and operator test was on Tuesday. It was a coop style driver test where all candidates will be both operators and drivers. The winners were decided by the amount of coral they score versus how much is dropped. Drivers were assessed by how many cones they hit while moving across the room. The candidate with the most total points got to choose their role on the drive team and the rest were decided based off of scores. Wednesday was an all programming day so programmers could work on the code, sensors, stops, and auto.”

The remainder of the team prepared for competition by setting up the Huntington Robotics trailer and organizing it. A list of items needed was developed. Thursday saw the drive team practice cycling and operating the robot.

Sunday’s Regal Eagle Rampage at Bethpage allowed the Huntington Robotics members to make important adjustments and final tweaks before heading into actual competition.