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Pocatello robotics team places at competition

POCATELLO - With only one semester of training under their belt, School District 25's Haywire Robotics team took second place in a northwest regional competition.

The team traveled to Portland, Ore., March 9-13 to compete against 37 teams from Canada, California, Oregon, Alaska, Washington, Montana and Idaho in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology robotics competition, or FIRST.

"I was really proud of them. I couldn't have been more proud if they had been my own kids," said Pocatello High School Robotics and Electronic Instructor Cindy Watts. "Every little subgroup in the team pulled together to support the group as a whole. It was awesome."

The team was selected to be in an alliance with two more experienced robotics teams, and the three groups of students and their robots won several matches to earn the No. 2 position.

Only the three robotics teams in the winning alliance go to the national FIRST competition in Atlanta, but Watts said Pocatello's Haywire Team did as well as they hoped in their first time participating in the robotics competition.

In the competition, the robots, each weighing roughly 120 pounds, performed various tasks in less than two minutes, including stacking 2.5-foot-tall plastic tetrahedrons onto 5- to 7- foot goals; arranging the tetras in "tic-tac-toe" patterns; and returning the robots behind the starting line before their time was up.

The robots also completed an autonomous mode challenge, when robots performed tasks without students controlling their movements, which showcased students' computer programming skills.

Pocatello's Haywire Team finished programming the robot in Portland, just prior to the competition, but the last minute program worked.

Team members held their breath as the robot moved forward, turned left, went over to a corner goal and reached an arm out and knocked down a small, hanging tetra.

The team did so well that they piqued the interest of Micron, Microsoft and Idaho National Laboratories representatives watching the competition.

"The kids were just fantastic," she said. "They worked very well as a team and solved problems as they came up. And they kept encouraging each other."

There were only two teams representing Idaho in the competition, the group from Pocatello and a team from Hillcrest High School in Idaho Falls.

Pocatello's rookie team had students from Pocatello High School and Century High School, but the program is open to all students in the district.

Several parents, mentors, teachers and Pocatello High School Vice Principal Robert Parker traveled with the team and cheered them on.

"You couldn't ask for a better support group," Watts said.

The robotics program is funded in part with money from a $1.9 million GK-12 grant ISU received almost two years ago, in a collaborative effort between School District 25 science teachers, several other local districts, and the geoscience, engineering and biology departments at Idaho State University.

The GK-12 grant made it possible to create 10 sub-projects throughout the area's school districts, which included the FIRST Program in School District 25 and the team at Hillcrest High School in Idaho Falls.

"We are so thankful to both the National Science Foundation and NASA, who contributed the majority of the money to allow us to participate," Watts said. "These kids got an experience they can't get anywhere else. It has really inspired several of these students to pursue careers in the sciences and engineering."

That is exactly the result intended by the creators of the FIRST program and the GK-12 grant.

The GK-12 project is designed to raise interest in science and technology through direct interaction between students, university graduates and doctoral candidates, and the community.

Emphasis is placed on inquiry-based research methods in the science labs, mentoring partnerships, and encourages communication between the program's participants and local professionals.