County 4-H robotics team starts second year

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Jan 09, 20130

The 4-H robots are taking shape again in Whitman County.

Palouse Area Robotics Team members go over the challenges they must overcome with a new robot they are to build this year as part of the international FIRST program.

The Palouse Area Robotics Team, in its second year, is a group of high school students which participate in the international F.I.R.S.T. program (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

The program, partially sponsored by NASA, gives teams a box of components and a challenge. Then, after time for strategizing, building and testing, the teams compete against each other.

This year’s Palouse Area Robotics Team (PART) group received their challenge last Saturday, Jan. 5.

Gathering at Lincoln Middle School in Pullman, 16 kids from Colfax, Colton, Gar-Pal and Pullman High Schools heard the assignment online from the NASA Channel, broadcast from Manchester, N.H.

The task for 2013 is to design a robot that shoots Frisbees into targets and can climb a ten-foot steel tower. In addition, there is a 15-second pre-programmed autonomous part to the challenge.

“There’s always three parts to any robotics competition,” said PART volunteer Dave Thrall.

On Saturday, representatives from PART picked up their kit of components in Cheney.

At Lincoln Middle School, the group unpacked them, did an inventory and started thinking.

“We spent four hours pulling the challenge apart,” said Tharp.

Once the team is ready for competition in March, they will have built a robot weighing 140-150 pounds.

It will compete in two minute and 15 second segments with five other robots on the same field.

Certain rules apply, such as additions to the components cannot exceed $4,000. No individual added part can cost more then $400 is another rule. Finally, a team is not allowed to add a part without offering it to other teams.

PART will compete on March 21-23 in Ellensburg at the Central Washington Regional Competition and again April 4-6 in Cheney at the Spokane Regional competition. The Spokane event will include teams from around the northwest as well as Mexico.

The winning team will be invited to the world championship in St. Louis.

It costs $100 per student to participate in PART this year, with scholarships available, said Tharp.

“If other students want to participate, they are more than welcome to join, but we’d like them pretty quick,” said Tharp.

Tharp indicated the PART team will divide into smaller groups including CAD design, Electrical, Programming, Mechanical and Systems Integration.

“Everybody’s pretty excited about this year’s challenge,” said Tharp. “It’s gonna be a tough one, but we don’t want it to be easy. We’ll see what we can do.”

This year’s PART team so far is: David Milano (Palouse), Colby Bishop (Colton), Ryan Christopherson (Colfax), Hunter Farnsworth (Pullman), Tamay Garg (Pullman), Patricia Halbaker (Pullman), Clare Jacobs (Colfax), Nick Johnson (Colfax), Alex Kackman (Colfax), Zack Legett (Pullman), Isaac Love (Pullman), Sebastian Ludwig (Pullman), Conner Ormand (Pullman), Braden Pezeshki (Pullman), Katherine Woodhouse (Colfax) and Brady Wuestney (Pullman).