Robotics squad negotiates ‘waves’ of intense, regional competition

Speeding across the field, picking up small items to collect points while extending their secret legs to climb up towers, robots claim the center of attention for teams across the world. With a driver hidden in a booth, eyeing the bot constantly, the rest of the team watch and cheer from the sidelines, willing to step in at any minute to fix broken pieces. For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, also known as FIRST, hosts high school competitions centered around science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education through the process of building robots. These teams go through a series of competitions beginning with regionals all the way up to the world championships. 

Taking their rightful spot with schools from around the globe, Oshkosh has its own robotics team: Wave Robotics. With students from both North and West High Schools, they work together to build their robots and strive to reach the championships. 

“We are in FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), and every year we have a new game that is revealed, and we have to build a robot that completes the task,” senior Riley Egnoski, the CAD lead of the team, said. “These robots are generally bigger in size, and it takes a couple months to design and assemble and build the robot and, in the end, all your hard work pays off when you compete in competitions.”

Head of the team is senior Olu Akinleye, who was also the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) lead along with Egnoski. He also was the driver of the robot this year. Like every year, Wave entered and were eager to reach championships.

“This past competition was to see who would go on to the world championships,” Akinleye said. “The theme was Rapid React, so you had to see how fast you could score balls into the lower and upper hubs and how fast you could get your robot to climb.”

Every year, courses feature a new design with a specific area to score points and separate challenges to earn extra points. These points determine the placing of the team in the end. To add a challenge to the robot, there was climbing that had to be done.

“There was also a component that was almost like uneven monkey bars and the robot would have to climb up the different bars, and there was a height restriction of how far the robot could extend,” sophomore Isabelle Polishinski, who was part of the manufacturing team, said. “We wanted to get to the top bar, but it was outside of the extension limit and instead of having to climb every single bar, we rode up the trust, which supported the monkey bars.”

This strategy Wave took to complete the challenge was unique. Barely any other teams had taken the same approach, putting Wave at an advantage towards the robot’s design.

“We kind of, I don’t want to say we cheated, but we found a way around climbing up the monkey bars,” Egnoski said. “We didn’t climb up the bars but up the support of the monkey bars. Us and only one other team in the world had to climb this year.”

Along with extra supports to climb up the monkey bar frame, the robot featured many unique components that benefitted the team in the long run.

“This year, we featured a very unique robot design, especially compared to other robots,” sophomore Ben Grill, the software lead on the team, said. “Our robot featured a dual punch system, which means it had punchers instead of a traditional flying wheel, which is a rotating wheel, to throw the balls. We were the only robot at the competition to have this specific mechanism to punch, which is very exciting.”

This robot design shared similarities to the team’s robot last year. Though when it came to designing the robot for this year, they kept the punching system, as both regional challenges had to have a throwing component. 

“We ended up using two really big punchers powered by really strong springs that punched oversized tennis balls into goals that were 10 feet into the air,” senior Ryan Gohde, the manufacturing subteam lead and operator of the robot, said. “Each of the springs on these punchers had 160 pounds of force on them.”

Not only was the robot scored based on how successful it was at completing tasks, but speed was a major factor to the competition.

“At the end, we lifted our 150 pound robot roughly eight feet up into the air, fully supported on its own, and the fastest time we did this was in three seconds, which was another way we could score points,” Gohde said.

The game didn’t require just scoring the points. The robot could play defense and prevent the other team from scoring. But no matter what position the robot was playing, both teams facing head to head had to be fast.

“You could also play defense against other robots, so you can imagine 160 pounds slamming into something else that’s going 20 feet a second,” he said. “It’s not little robots, it’s pretty huge bots.”

Wave gave it their all to win these competitions, but, unfortunately, their final ranking didn’t allow them to advance to the championships.

“The competition went okay,” freshman Kevin Bal, a CAD student on the team, said. “A lot of stuff broke on our robot, so we were busy fixing a lot of stuff. It was hard to get to the matches in time.”

While this competition was unusual for Wave, as they usually go on to the championships, it makes time available for reassessing the mistakes.

“We unfortunately only could go to one regional this year instead of two,” Polishinski said. “How our season usually goes is our first regional we attend, we get all of the kinks out and get the design down. Then we go to the second regional, and that’s where the robot is in top tier shape and able to perform to the best of our ability. Since we only went to one, we were really limited in how much error we could get out.”

Although the team was placed in the middle of the crowd, Wave was able to win major accomplishments, with one of them being the Excellence in Engineering Award, the highest technical award at the competition. 

“The Excellence in Engineering Award basically means that out of all the robots, we had the best engineered robots,” Egnoski said. “We had the best designed robots, our machinery skills were good, everything came together well, it looked like a good design, and performed well on the fields. Basically, we had the coolest engineered robot there.”

Besides recognition from judges, fellow engineers also recognized their creativity.  

“On top of winning this award, there are some teams that go around and give out awards from their team that they made in their shop that they, I assume, vote on the night before and go around and give it to teams,” Gohde said. “We had three teams come up and give us the most creative robot awards. There’s not many teams that give out custom awards and to win three of them is pretty impressive.”

Not only that, but junior Hannah Chung was selected for an individual award. Her award, the Dean’s List, is the most prestigious individual recognition. 

“It’s an award given to students who have outstanding outreach in their communities in both STEM and pushing FIRST robotics programs, and it’s about your team leadership and what roles you have on your team in both technical aspects and leading the community in general. It also evaluates your overall contributions to your community and team,” she said. “In every region globally, they have a set number of students that can be sent as representatives in the entire competition to be evaluated for international championships.”

The process to win was rigorous, with multiple essays and evaluations occurring. 

“My mentor of the team had to write an essay about me and my contributions I’ve done for my team when I was nominated at the regional level,” Chung said. “At the competition, I did a ten-minute interview with the judges, and, basically, they asked about the things my mentor wrote about and I added on, elaborated, and things like that. From there, those people wrote an essay about me, and I was chosen as a finalist.”

Next step for her is heading to Houston, Texas to see if she was chosen as a winner. While there, she’ll meet over 100 different students who were also chosen.

“At championships, they look at about 100 people internationally who get selected in the applicant pool, and they take both your mentor and your judges’ essays, and they evaluate you and everyone else,” she said. “They take 10 top winners and those are the winners of the Dean’s List finalists. From there on, you get a full, paid for trip to Massachusetts. Right now, I’m going to the international competition down in Houston, and there is an award ceremony there for the Dean’s List finalists, and we get to have lunch and a banquet, and we get to talk to and meet Dean Kamen, who’s the founder of the entire FIRST Robotics program.”

With the end of the Wave season, the post-season of the team opens up opportunities for reevaluation and training for new students. 

“The season is over, but that doesn’t mean that Wave is done,” Egnoski said. “We have our off-season in which we will debrief on the competition, what went well, what went wrong, and from there, we will set a plan moving forward and hopefully teach some of the younger students that are the future of Wave the skills needed to compete at a high level next year.”

By Ruby Pluchinsky

Oshkosh West Index Volume 118 Issue 7

April 25th, 2022