By Taylor Boyd
The PC Rocket Robotics placed 10th out of 36 teams at the State Championship in Colonial Heights on Feb. 27 and 28.
“They had some problems in their first three matches, a couple of disconnects and stuff, but in their last match with their alliance partner, they ended scoring 365 points, which was the highest point total of that Colonial Heights venue and the second highest of the state tournament. So, they were really excited about that,” John Pendleton, mentor, said.
The group began in June 2018 by John and Angie Pendleton. It has quickly progressed from learning about the robot to competing against around 30 other teams within Virginia.
“The first year they were just learning the robot and they did a decent job on putting the robot together. Last year, they actually made it to the right on the edge of making it to the State Championship,” John Pendleton said, and explained he decided to start the program to give kids opportunities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).
“There used to be a First Robotics team at the high school about 10 years ago, but funding and everything sort of shut it down. So, when me and Angie bought the property on Main Street, one thing I wanted to do was to see if we could get that back” for the kids, he said.
The team currently includes eight members and five mentors, some of which were involved in the First Robotics team at Patrick County High School.
“For the most part, we’ve had the same members. We weren’t able to recruit a lot this year because of the pandemic,” he said, adding students are eligible to join if they are in 7th grade to 12th grade.
The team is broken into three sub-units that specialize in different parts of creating the robot, Pendleton said, and explained the subdivisions allow members to focus on their primary interest while still contributing to the whole team effort.
“We have a team that focuses on the building part of the robot, building it, the mechanical and electrical part of it. Then we have a team that focuses on programming, because we have to program the robot to do what it needs to do. Then, we have another team that works on the computerized design part of it,” he said.
“This year, one important part of it was the computerized design. We have a team member that’s worked on this program called SOLIDWORKS so he can basically create from scratch 3D models of anything he wants to, basic parts, and he makes those models and then we take that file and put it on our 3D printer, and we make our part. We have a lot of custom parts that are designed from scratch by the kids, which is really cool,” he said.
Pendleton said to build this year’s robot, team members “really just took a drive-kit with the wheels and everything and sort of modified it to get it to drive like they wanted it to.”
He said First Robotics comes out with a new game every year, with this year’s called Ultimate Goal.
“Sort of what happens in this thing is a match is 2 minutes-and-a-half. The first 30 seconds is called autonomous mode,” he said. To score points in this round, members must program the robot to execute certain functions once a controller button is pressed.
“Then, they can’t touch the robot or the controllers for 30 seconds. So, the robot is running a pre-programmed code to make it move during those 30 seconds,” he said.
The driver-controlled period follows, he said, and explained members “have another program where they actually program controls into like a PlayStation or XBOX controller. They pick up those controllers and then the last two minutes of the game they’re actually driving the robot and making it do all those tasks.”
Pendleton said the structure of the game is different this year due to COVID-19.
“Typically, like last year when we went to those competitions, four robots are on the playing field at one time. So, you’re randomly selected an alliance partner and the points you score and the points they score are combined and then, you’re competing against two other teams,” he said. However, because of the COVID rules, “there aren’t any other two teams, so the team we’re playing with, all of our points add up and score together.”
For more information, visit the group’s Facebook page at Facebook/PCRocketRobotics. Donations can be made to PC Rocket Robotics Inc. and mailed to P.O. Box 165 Stuart, VA, 24171.
