Robot fever takes over Columbia High School at tournament

Photo Courtesy of CHS Robotics Club
Columbia High School Robotics Club coach Allan Tumolillo hangs out with the CHS Cougar.

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — The halls of Columbia High School swarmed with electric energy as the CHS Robotics Club hosted the sixth annual Robo-CATastrophe robotics tournament on Sunday, Dec. 4, at the high school in Maplewood.

With 36 teams from across the state competing, the Robo-CATastrophe is the largest robotics qualifier in New Jersey. The teams are members of the FIRST Tech Challenge; FTC is an international robotics program that holds competitions for students in grades seven through 12. Teams of up to 10 students design, build and program robots for competition.

In competitions held around the state by New Jersey FTC teams compete in pairs, known as “alliances,” using their robots to score points by completing a variety of tasks during 2.5-minute matches. The robot kit is reusable from year-to-year and is programmed using JAVA. Teams are required to develop strategy and build robots based on sound engineering principles.

Awards are given for the competition as well as for community-outreach design and other real-world accomplishments. Teams advance from local qualifying tournaments to state championship tournaments before advancing to the World Championship Tournament, held each year in St. Louis, Mo.

The Robotics Club at Columbia High School has been in existence since the 2010-2011 school year and has accomplished a great deal since its inception.

“The club was started six years ago, when parents of a former student approached the school about their son’s interest in robotics. The student’s father worked for a big tech company and his son had always been interested in it,” CHS science teacher Allan Tumolillo said in a recent interview with the News-Record. “We didn’t have one so they talked to the science department supervisor and he asked me if I would be willing to take it on, and I agreed to do it.”

Tumolillo said the goals for the first year were limited, in that he just wanted his team to focus on the basics of being able to design and build a functioning robot.

Not only did the founding members of the CHS Robotics Club meet that goal their first year, they also exceeded it by winning the New Jersey State Championship and proceeding to the 2011 World Championship competition in St. Louis.

Though the Columbia High School teams that competed in Sunday’s event did not place in the tournament, Tumolillo is pleased with the effort his students put into the competition.

“The game is to find and advance; you have to design a robot, think about what you want the robot to do, ensure that the robot will fit into a special box called a “sizing box” once it’s built; you have to code software so robot will be able to turn, stop and lift things, and it has to be programmed to function without you driving it,” he said.

More than 40 students participated in the Columbia High School Robotics Club in some capacity during the tournament, competing in the event, helping to set up the fields used in competition, making announcements and directing visiting schools and other guests to the cafeteria or gym to watch the excitement.

For Tumolillo, the lessons learned through the competition go far beyond winning or losing.

“The students learn how to build, design and write codes, and one of the more important parts is that, when it doesn’t work, like any good engineer, they have to figure out why it doesn’t work,” he said. “They were pretty excited that a lot of people came in and out to see what they were doing. A lot of them don’t participate in big athletic events, so this was a big deal and there was a lot of excitement. They all want to do better but it’s also part of the experience of just being there.”

This year, the CHS Robotics Club has partnered with the CHS Boxes of Fun Club, which collects toys, books and art supplies to distribute to hospitalized children to help them pass the time while awaiting bone marrow transplants at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center. Each team competing in the Robo-CATastrophe was asked to donate a new, unopened, unwrapped gift. Gifts were also welcome from spectators.