Roboctopi reaching for world title

Posted

The Roboctopi, Port Townsend’s own robotics team, followed their win April 1-2 with another victory in the district competition at Eastern Washington University (EWU) April 6-8, earning them an invite to the world championships in Houston, Texas, April 19-22.

The Roboctopi competed against 35 state teams in Auburn at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics event, placing third in the round-robin qualifying rounds. When the team chose two other teams to join it in the final bracket rounds, team parent Brian Morningstar deemed the alliance “a formidable force,” giving the Roboctopi enough points to move onto districts at EWU, where it was one among 64 teams.

Although they again earned enough points to go forward, this time to Houston, the Roboctopi are now faced with covering entry fees and travel costs adding up to roughly $20,000.

“It’s a pretty amazing David-and-Goliath story, how our little Port Townsend area team of barely more than 10 members kept advancing through the levels of competition up against giant teams, some with more than 130 members, from the Seattle-Tacoma area that are very well-funded and mentored by Boeing, Microsoft and the like,” said Catherine Burhen, mother of Pallas Burhen, Roboctopi team president.

Port Townsend’s Roboctopi team members hail from diverse backgrounds, including five different schools.

DIFFERENT SCHOOLS

Pallas Burhen lives in Port Townsend, but travels to Peninsula College in Port Angeles two days a week for a chemistry class sequence. Aaron Serrato lives in Chimacum, while Emily Skeel divides her time between Port Townsend and Chimacum. Ella Ashford is homeschooled, while Max Morningstar and Spencer Drewry attend West Sound Academy. James Kienle just moved to Issaquah, but returned to Port Townsend for extended stretches of the six-week build season.

Senior Sam Jasper, who serves as team captain, noted the struggle to balance the needs of the project.

“At districts, we were able to speed up our hopper by a lot,” Jasper said. “We added a second rotor and removed a lot of small agitation devices, so now it shoots ridiculously fast. But as our hopper sped up, our accuracy went down, so that was our pitfall.”

Jasper aims to ramp up the robot’s accuracy, and possibly add better gear manipulation, “to make it competition-ready against the best robots in the world.”

Ashford cited the complications on environmental conditions on site at districts, including the stage lighting on the competition field, which had an impact on the robot’s vision-tracking sensor, and thereby its shooting accuracy.

“But because of our innovative students, and the perseverance and adaptability of our drive team, we were able to qualify for the world championships,” Ashford said. “This means we now have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.”

$20,000 NEEDED

As a member of the Roboctopi’s business team, Ashford knows that $20,000 would be a big contribution from the local community, but she believes Port Townsend’s robotics team has already proven its worth to Jefferson County by qualifying for the world championships.

“We’ve demonstrated the importance of encouraging science and engineering in small communities,” Ashford said. “It’s amazing that a small-town team like ours was able to keep up and even surpass many larger, better-funded teams, from big cities like Seattle. Now, we are asking for the support of our community to show the world that this county can keep up with these exciting, fast-moving fields.”

“We do so much more than just build a robot,” Jasper said. “This is the best real-world experience you will ever get in high school. It teaches you to be gracious and professional at all times. You have to work with teams that you might not like, against teams that you love. You need to solve problems quickly, and you need to have 20/20 foresight. It’s the hardest fun that you’ll ever have.”

“This isn’t some odd little club that drives around RC cars,” Drewry said. “The amount of effort, time, commitment and all-around skills it takes to put this together leads to an incredible thing. We’re competing on a worldwide level, against thousands of other teams.”

Regardless of whether the team is able to travel to Houston, senior Chance Kane reported that the Roboctopi are already in talks with Pacific Northwest FIRST Robotics about potentially setting up an off-season event at Fort Worden.

“We hope to further develop the relationship between our community and FIRST, and hopefully spark an interest in STEM in kids who may eventually end up being the future of both our team and our community,” Kane said. “To any kids out there with any measure of interest, I know it may seem you need to be a super genius to join, but you really don’t. The team is about learning, and then using that learning to build and do really cool things. When I started, I essentially knew nothing. Don’t be scared to come talk to us about joining.”

To support the Roboctopi, you can log onto their fundraising page at

https://roboctopi.dntly.com/campaign/4918-roboctopi-race-to-texas-world-robotics-championships