Robotics Team
Slimmed Down Manus Imperitorus
To
Compete in Second FIRST Contest
By Sara Sugrue
(March 2, 2005)
Team 1418, Mason’s official Robotics Team,
will be sending
12 of the 30 students who worked on the robot to compete in the For
Inspiration
and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition
held at Virginia Commonwealth
University
on March 3 through March 5. The team will be competing against 61 other
teams
from the around the world.
|
The
team has named their robot Manus Imperitorus,
Latin for “Hand of the Emperor, it
will compete in
a series of intricate competitions.
In the first 15 seconds of every round the robot is required to work in
“autonomous mode” without any human interference. For example, the
robot may be
required to locate objects at one end of the playing field and then
move them
to the other end of the field. “It’s like playing three-dimensional
tic-tac-toe,” said club co-sponsor Mr. John Ballou. In the rest of the
rounds
the robot is required to pick up the game pieces and then put them in
certain
goals distributed around the playing field.
The FIRST Robotics Competition and
Robotics program is designed to “teach kids the basics of engineering
and
physics above all else,” said co-sponsor and physics teacher Mr. David
Applegate, “The robotics program has given many of our students the
interest
and drive to fully learn about and pursue engineering".
|
|
Senior Nathan Ballou designs
parts for the assembly
of the robotics team's robot, Manus Imperitorus
(Latin for "Hand of the Emperor") The team
and its
robot will compete in the FIRST contest at VCU
tomorrow through Saturday.
(Photo by Olivia Farrow)
|
This will be the robotics team’s
second year competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Last year Team
1418
won the rookie all-star award, this year they are striving to compete
in the
final round of the competition held Saturday afternoon.
“We’ve been much more
sophisticated this year,” said Ballou. “For example, the students have
custom
built many more parts for the robot than they did last year. And we
worked hard
to trim the robot’s weight from 157 to 117 pounds in just a few days.
If all
goes well, and there are a lot of things that can happen, then we
should have a
very competitive robot.”
|
|
|
Seventh
grader Emilio Ramos is busy polishing the
underside of the robot's chassis.
(Photo by Olivia Farrow)
|
Tell us
what you think.
E-mail lassogmhs@hotmail.com
|
