Heading to Houston
RoboDragons to compete at robotics quest
RoboDragons mentors are Michael Thelen, Jennifer Miller, Daniel Deuble and Jimmy Davis. Students pictured are Sara Boundy, Nate Deuble, Colton Nicley, Lily Hill, Wyatt Delk, Jordan Jones, Leah Thelen, Micah Williams, Eneri Davis, Dakota Totherow, Aiden Davis and Christian Staton. Not pictured: Damien Eitel, Jackson Ayers, Klayton Mann, Madeleine Rawdon and Ryan Butler.
The RoboDragons will next head to the FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Championship in the Texas city from April 17-20.
The team built and designed and will control Robo Bagins, who will need to gather foam rings and place them in a six-foot-tall goal, as will every other team’s robots.
Coach Jimmy Davis said this challenge inspired the CHS robot’s name, honoring the film and book series “The Lord of The Rings” and its central character, Frodo Baggins.
For extra points, Robo Baggins and the other robots will try to climb a loose-hanging chain.
The RoboDragons are heading to this competition because they won at the Smoky Mountain Regional Championship at the Knoxville Coliseum on March 3 doing the same tasks.
“In a word, surreal,” Davis said regarding how it felt qualifying for the championship. “I can’t put it on me. It’s actually on the kids, on the team. They’re the ones who put in the energy and the work to make it happen.”
He said the Texas event will pit them against other regional championship teams from Israel, Mexico and Brazil, among others.
The leadership of the team’s seniors was a key to its success, he said.
“They have really helped everyone else see the value of the time they put in,” he said.
“They’ve really set us on a good course for the future,” Davis said. “I see a lot of good things happening.”
As of Monday, March 18, the team still needed to raise about $30,000 for the trip. Anyone wanting to donate should make out checks to Clinton High School with “Robotics” in the memo line. Mail them to Clinton High School, 425 Dragon Dr, Clinton, TN 37716.
Davis said he and the Education Foundation for Clinton City and Anderson County Schools were working on a method for electronic donations, but as of Monday that was not yet ready. He said some community members were already reaching out to businesses for donations.
“This didn’t exist when I was in school, so it’s amazing the opportunities we’re going to give to these kids and the experiences I’m able to provide the students,” Davis said, such as competing with teams from around the world. “I’m very privileged to be able to give those kids that kind of a life experience.”
He said the team had focused on keeping the robot simple, using an arm with articulated roller intake to gather the rings and pass them off to a flywheel launching system to get them in the goal.
He said these solutions had worked well. Still, the team is hoping to make RoboBaggins even better by adding vision sensors to target the goal automatically.
Davis also said the team hopes to make the climbing rig more consistent.
“The level of competition is going to be much higher,” he said of the coming event.
Another Anderson County team, the Secret City Wildbots from Oak Ridge High School, was a finalist at the Smoky Mountain Regional Championship. It also won a quality award, but will not be heading to Houston.