Carla Clark | For The Republic Rhea Jain, at left, and Grace Huang, who have been fabricating robotic parts with a CNC machine, demonstrate how it works as the members of Team 4926 GalacTech, the Columbus Robotics Club’s high school team, prepare for an upcoming competition, Columbus Robotics Headquarters, Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, March 13, 2024.
Columbus Robotics’ Team 4926, known as GalacTech, is embarking on the season ahead where they compete in For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics.
In FIRST, “teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team brand, hone teamwork skills and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors,” according to the FIRST Robotics website.
The students engage in engineering with real-world applicability through competition, but it is also much more than that if you let students, coaches and mentors tell it.
Students build the robots from top to bottom, starting with the design using computer aided design (CAD) software called Fusion 360. Then the creations are brought to life, which students machine themselves. At the team’s headquarters, students use 3D printers, a computer numerical control (CNC) machine, do powder coating, build vision systems and more. The work entails constant problem-solving— a forte for many of the students.
Juniors Rhea Jain and Grace Huang operate the CNC Machine, used in manufacturing for machining metal and plastic parts. The duo learned to use it this past offseason through a lot of trial and error, they said.
Huang, who has been involved since her freshman year, extolled about the environment of the FIRST events, calling them “really exciting and really inspiring.”
Jain got her start in January of 2023 and said her dad is a doctor and her mom an accountant, so she wanted to do something a little different. She said she “most likely” will pursue engineering.
The events are full of competition, but they also pair different teams up, called alliances, so students learn to work with different people.
FIRST was founded in 1992 by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the insulin pump and Segway, in hopes of inspiring students to dream and become science and technology leaders.
GalacTech team founder Sam Geckler said the idea behind FIRST is to “engage the students to dream about (becoming science and technology leaders) the way a lot of kids dream about being basketball players and entertainers.”
Watching the team practice autonomous driving in preparation for this years game called “Crescendo” is a lot like basketball, only if the basketball players themselves were painstakingly designed by the staff on the sideline and if the ball was shot at the hoop at speeds near 100 mph. It is quite the spectacle and easy to see why many students involved in FIRST go on to successful careers in a variety of engineering fields.
“Crescendo” consists of two alliances of three teams each where they compete to score notes, which are like rings, by depositing them into three different field elements with a musical theme. Notes are shot up into “speakers” and placed into an “amplifier” on the ground to score points. As rounds of competition come to a close, the robots climb the “stage” in the center of the field by pulling up on a chain to place notes into a trap. Alliances can gain additional rewards for meeting certain scoring thresholds and cooperating with opponents. GalacTech calls this idea of competing and working together at the same time “coopitition.”
“Once these students are out in the world doing whatever they’re doing, very little gets done in isolation, they’re going to be working with people,” Geckler said.
The in-season schedule is a four month sprint from January to April. Teams hope to earn trips to the Indiana FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship by doing well in two district events. GalacTech has been to the state championship each year since 2019 and made the FIRST world championship twice in 2017 and 2022, playing teams from counties like Brazil and Turkey.
Senior Cooper Hawkins was the robot’s driver and he said navigating the field, where high speed collisions with other team’s robots are commonplace, is a lot like navigating “an asteroid field.”
Hawkins joined a FIRST LEGO team in the fourth grade and has been at it ever since. He plans to study mechanical or nuclear engineering next year. Hawkins has been to the state championship in each of his years at the high school level and hopes that streak remains unblemished this year.
There is endless strategy involved and GalacTech has a scouting team to try to forecast what other teams might do and what is most efficient.
The team put together a spreadsheet to document the list of possible autonomous paths they could take. The list topped out at 1,200 different options.
Forethought is put into what prospective alliance partners may do so as little is left to chance as possible.
This year’s game was revealed in January and since then the team has continuously tweaked aspects of their robot, dubbed “Groovin Green.”
“I keep telling them this, naming a robot is kind of an art form,” Geckler said.
Some favorites of theirs in the past include “Green Goblin,” and “Bot Ross.”
Groovin Green’s shooter that propels the notes is on at least its fourth iteration, the wiring has been completely redone and there has been three or four different wheel configurations, team members said. At practice, thought is invested into the smallest of details, even if they are invisible to the naked eye. The team debated about whether to color the battery cover green or leave it stealth back.
Mentor Chris Hahn has been involved since the team’s beginning in 2014 during his senior year. He took a four-year hiatus when he was getting his degree from Purdue and then took a job at Cummins Inc.
“After that first competition season and after graduation, I was hooked,” Hahn said. “It’s been fun watching the team grow and evolve its capabilities.”
Nigilan Mahadevan and Rithiik Murugan, both juniors, put a lot of work into designing Groovin Green in its earliest stages.
“We just think it’s really fun to be able to design stuff and come up with ideas, just being able to innovate,” Mahadevan said. “We just feel really proud seeing what we design out there in the field.”
The favorite part for Murugan is all the many elements that make up FIRST Robotics.
“I think mine is just learning those practical skills, and then putting that in a competitive sense, but also collaborating just makes it fun.”
The competitions are great for seeing where a team may stack up with the others, but Geckler said he often tells the students the real magic happens right in the Reeves building.
“What happened here, what you experienced here, what you explored here, that’s what it’s all about,” Geckler said.
People can learn more and support Columbus Robotics at team4926.org.
