Redbird Robotics gearing up for 2006 competition
BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer

ALLENTOWN — The new Robotics Club at Allentown High School (AHS) is off to a rousing start, with another generous contribution from a local businessman.

The club, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), received a $10,000 check from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Bristol-Myers Squibb employee and local resident Chris Nalbone formally presented the check to the Board of Education at its Nov. 16 meeting.

Nalbone said that an article about FIRST that appeared in the Examiner prompted Allentown resident Terry Horner, of TAH Industries Inc., Robbinsville, also to make a contribution to the club.

Horner will donate $3,000 and 50 hours of machining time at TAH Industries.

The machining time will involve taking the team’s robot designs to TAH for construction, refining and completion, Nalbone said. The time will allow the club to perform metal work, prototyping of metal components, welding, milling and turning operations, Nalbone said.

Horner did not return phone calls for comment.

In addition to the donations from Bristol-Myers Squibb and TAH, the AHS FIRST Team recently learned it is one of 69 FIRST teams in the U.S. to receive a Program Growth Grant for $6,000 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The Allentown FIRST team will use the funding and the machining time to design and develop a robot that ultimately it will pit against robots designed by other FIRST teams in various levels of competition.

To get a feel for the FIRST competitions, the Allentown team had the opportunity to compete with a borrowed robot in North Brunswick on Nov. 19 at a FIRST Robotics event called Brunswick Eruption 4, Nalbone said.

Nalbone described Brunswick Eruption 4 as the last of many FIRST postseason events for 2005. The regular season involves regional competitions in March, followed by the National Championship in April, Nalbone said.

Sponsored by FIRST Team 25 from North Brunswick Township High School, Brunswick Eruption 4 drew 31 schools from several northeastern states, according to Nalbone.

“Many of the [participating] schools were veterans,” Nalbone said. “But there were also seven prerookie [teams], including Allentown, which got into the event by borrowing a robot from a veteran, mentor school.”

Team Mercury from Hightstown High School allowed AHS to borrow a robot, Nalbone said.

The Allentown team, now known as Team 1807, or Redbird Robotics, went to the Hightstown school’s robotics shop last weekend. There, members from both teams worked together to retrofit a robot used in a 2003 competition, so that Redbird Robotics could use the machine during Brunswick Eruption 4.

Nalbone said the retrofitting involved “building a new chain-driven, elevator-action arm” and “programming the logic so that various joystick controls would enable different robot behavior.”

During the FIRST events in 2005, teams had their robots compete in a game called Triple Play. The game was played on a tic-tac-toe field of nine goals in a three-robot-on-three competition. The object of the game was for the robots to cap the goals and to try to get three goals in a down, across or diagonal pattern to earn bonus points.

“Each round was two minutes, where every second counts and six robots are flying around the field, remotely controlled by students amidst blaring music and cheering fans,” Nalbone said.

Nalbone said Team 1807 competed in seven preliminary rounds during the Brunswick Eruption 4. The rounds ran from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“We finished in 25th place,” Nalbone said, “but we impressed many onlookers throughout the day with our capping and driving technique.”

After the preliminary competition, the team, which is made up of four students (driver, arm operator, field coach and human player) and four mentors, spent the rest of the afternoon rooting for its favorites in the elimination rounds.

Nalbone said the team also scouted out features that it hopes to employ in the robot it will start building in 2006.

Another highlight of the competition, Nalbone said, was when members of the Allentown team presented a trophy for “Gracious Professionalism,” which is FIRST’s motto, to Team 56, of Bound Brook High School, in recognition of the generosity they showed AHS when competing in May in Montclair.

Redbird Robotics will begin gearing up for the 2006 building season that starts in January, which will culminate in regional competitions in Trenton in early March and in Philadelphia in late March.

“This has all been made possible by the support from our community,” Nalbone said.