Stinky Stinkers, Locked In and Mega Mecanums may seem like random phrases stringed together, but they were the exciting names of the three teams the Woodside robotics team brought to Mechanical M-Ayhem.
According to the Menlo Atherton Robotics website, Mechanical M-Ayhem was created in 2018 to help rookie robotic team members. This competition was the first for rookies on the team, and the first of the school year. Mechanical M-Ayhem was a robotics competition at Menlo-Atherton High School in the MA Ayres Gym. The robotics team competed from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Nov. 23 against nine other groups. Woodside brought rookies, veterans and mentors to help secure the victory.
“I really enjoy getting to learn new skills [at robotics club],” freshman rookie Kai Montauk said. “We’re learning industry level skills there, and it’s fun to also work with your friends and work with your hands. I’ve met a lot of really cool people.”
Montauk was also one of the pit crew leads. Pit crew leads are responsible for creating checklists and checking the robot before and after the matches to ensure systems are working properly.
“I wrote a fair bit of code for the robot, including the code that let it drive autonomously during the competition,” Montauk said. “I tried to provide some strategy, but I honestly think I did more harm than good. I tried to make a point and be aware of what was going on so I could manage and effectively lead my small group to build the robot in the best way possible.”
There were other responsibilities on the team, such as a human player.
“I was the human player,” freshman rookie Yotaro Kuwajima said. “That means in the competition, there’s the robot actually doing things and there’s a corner where a human, who is me, can load cubes into a robot.”
In the competition, every group played eight qualification matches. In the qualification matches, there were random alliances. Alliances are when two bots, or groups, team up to play against another alliance.
“What went really well was that we got two robots into the playoffs, and we generally did pretty good,” Kuwajima said. “My team got second place alliance. Some challenges were that our robot broke several times. We had to fix the robot during the competition.”
One of the issues encountered by the robotics teams were the dimensions of the field not being what was expected based on the instruction manual of the competition.
“After we got that fixed [the dimension issue], we went out to the practice field to test it, and we got another problem right before our first qualification match,” freshman rookie Fyodor Panchenko said. “Basically one of the motor’s wires came out somehow, and we had to replace the motor. We encountered more challenges like radio control configuration issues, and some other mid match situations.”
Despite this, Panchenko was part of Team 1003 that won second place alliance. Team 1003 won the semifinals and went to finals. For playoffs, which consist of semifinals and finals, the top teams were given the honor of choosing their own alliance teammates. Eight alliances were constructed, all aiming for victory.
“I think they did wonderfully well, even if some of the groups performed better than others,” engineering teacher Phillip Hopkins said. “All the students got to go through that whole cycle and feel what it’s like to be in an intense competition setting, where you have to get everything built right before you leave, and then actually compete at the event.”
Team 1003 lost the first two out of the three total matches in the finals. Team 1001 made it to the playoffs, but ultimately lost and so they played the loser’s final. Meanwhile, Team 1002 only played qualifications.
“I think the big things that we want to work on is making sure that students are figuring out how to use their time efficiently, how to delegate tasks, how to ask for help when they need it and how to quickly go through kind of an iteration cycle,” Hopkins said. “Design something, test it, figure out if it’s viable and what you need to kind of change about it, and then go through that redesign, retest and do that more rapidly.”
The Woodside Robotics team is currently excited and preparing for competition at the Silicon Valley Regional in the spring. Woodside is hosting the Silicon Valley competition for the first time this year, and they are traveling to Fresno for the Central Valley Regional in the spring.
“Join the Woodside robotics team, we need more people every year,” Montauk said. “There’s some really cool people you’ll meet, and some really cool things you’ll do pass that.”
