Robotics Club
Welcome to the Bishop Montgomery’s first ever Robotics Club.
We are the Robo-Knights.
We are designed to attract talented students with various skills to create, design and build a task specific robot. We are gearing our students to one of the most important careers of the now and future.
The types of skill sets that we seek and foster are computer programming (like LEGO Mind Storm, C Plus …) and designing (like CAD …), structural engineering & design, detailed records keeping (written & photographic), document interpreter, and fundraising team members.
We are fortunate at BMHS to have many students who fulfill these qualities. This did make it difficult to narrow the list to the number of spaces available, which at this time is 10.
Our primary goal for this year was to design and build a robot to compete in the US First Robotics competition – First Tech Challenge (FTC) division.
US FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Dean is famous for inventing the Segway, but more importantly, many medical devices.
"You have teenagers thinking they're going to make millions as NBA stars (or movie stars) when that's not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is." -Dean Kamen.
The competition started in September with several “Kick Off” events around the nation, and online. Along with other local teams, we attended the event at Monrovia High School. Some already established teams had demonstrated their robots from the previous year’s competition. When the game rules and tasks were announced, all the students were excited and in a flurry to get some ideas down.
We needed a base of operations and Ms. Libbon provided a couple of rooms in the convent for us. We started off with Spartan conditions, but with a good cleanup by our members, and some second hand furniture, we have a home. It is our “Club House.”
My hopes presented to the team members were that we could build a robot that would be able to move around on game day in December. This would be a success for our first team. The team got to work coming up with many design ideas, building and rebuilding, programming and reprogramming, and finally testing.
After many afternoons and weekends, we were ready for the LA County Region game day at Monrovia High School. Each team had five rounds to compete in. Our team had produced a good functioning robot that was competitive. Unfortunately, we had an unforeseen design flaw that made our robot non-competitive for three of the rounds. We made adjustments and did well in the other two rounds. There were 38 teams split into two arenas. At the end of the day, we came in 16th out of 19 for our arena. Not bad for a first year team, considering some other first year teams were unable to get a functioning robot ready for game day. So I would consider this a successful first year.
Although we are unable to continue the US First competition for the rest of the year, we are looking for other competitions to enter. Also, we will be preparing to screen for new applicants for next year’s team, and seeking guidance, help and mentorship from relevant professionals in our local community.
Thank-you for your interest in our Robotics Club. Please read our Donations and Mentorship pages, look at our Photos and Video pages, and check out the Links to US First and Dean Kamen.
