First-Class FRC
Since the founding of Team 2637: The Phantom Catz in 2008 the group has become an elective class and has accumulated experience over the years in various robotics competitions. Their most recent endeavor involved arranging an off-season For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition (FRC) scrimmage known as the SoCal Showdown. The event was hosted by The Phantom Catz, Team 4201 from the Da Vinci Schools and Team 687 from the California Academy of Mathematics and Science School. A total of 34 teams attended the event from Oct. 6 to Oct. 8 at Da Vinci High School, with no necessary qualifications due to the event being exclusive to the local robotics teams. At typical FIRST competitions, teams will compete in two regional competitions and if they win the finals or either of the outreach awards, Engineering Inspiration or Impact, they will advance to the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. This year, the game objective was for the robot to pick up game pieces, such as cones or cubes, and score them onto a grid-like goal to earn points. The team with the greatest number of points cumulatively after each match would progress to win.
This was Peninsula Robotics’ first time co-hosting an event with other schools. They had to prepare for the event by improving two of their latest robots, Overtime and Atlas. Overtime is a robot used to pick up a cube and shoot it into the desired perimeter, whereas Atlas is a robot that can pick up and bring both cubes and cones to the desired destination. Each participant of the team is tasked with a specific duty to help prepare for the event. Senior Darren Cheng is a part of the Mechanical Design subteam that is tasked to alter the robot, Overtime. The team’s mission was to redesign Overtime and make it move quicker to score more precisely.
“We were really eager to make [Overtime] score the most amount of points possible during the competition,” Cheng said. “We made the robot much lighter to move around the field faster and focused primarily on scoring cubes onto the shelves. I would then record the information and try to make it more efficient by altering different aspects of the robot.”
During the competition, members of The Phantom Catz were categorized to oversee different aspects of the event. Some jobs were to shadow referees for the matches while others were to maintain data for each trial of competition through applications (apps). Senior Prachod Kakatur created an app for members to input data for the robots before the competition, which helped organize data that was outputted during the competition. For instance, the app recorded how many seconds it took for the robot to place the cube into the desired area, which efficiently helped the members jot down the information. This collection of data would be utilized to form strategies and alliances for the gameplay. As a result, the team played all the way up to the finals and has achieved one of their biggest accomplishments by being both a finalist and alliance captain, a representative from the highest ranked team on an alliance. The alliance captains, Atlas and Overtime placed second and third. Kakatur explains how this event was different from the other competitions he has participated in.
“Differing from standard competitions, some of our [scouts] had to stay back while the bulk of our team represented [The Phantom Catz],” Kakatur said. “The remaining scouts had to volunteer a lot by being [aids to the] referees or just by helping with the materials. The overall experience was great, seeing how well the event executed.”
Since The Phantom Catz placed in the finals and earned alliance captains for their robots they are expected to win the regional competition and secure a position in the FIRST Championship in April. The team plans to continue developing innovative designs and setting realistic goals for their robot next season. Senior Johnathan Lin is excited to advance the robots further and compete in upcoming FRC competitions. “With Atlas and Overtime, we all gained a [lot] of experience because of the opportunity to work on two robots where everyone had their [own] jobs,” Lin said. “For Overtime specifically, it was a great design to be able to build off of because it was simpler [than Atlas]. I hope we [will] be able to [reach] for more ambitious designs since we have a bit more experience and cooperation [as a] team.
