Robotic’ ‘club’ earns ‘team’ status

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — It was a long time coming, but the Bloomfield High School Robotics Club is no more.
“We became an official team last year,” robotics teacher Michael Warholak said last week, in his classroom, while his students, the “Robotigers,” prepared their dune buggy-like robot, “Hammerdown,” for its second tournament in three weeks. Warholak, who has been teaching robotics for a dozen years at BHS, explained that the class he teaches and the team are one and the same.

“Our sport is a sport of the mind,” he said. “Being a team, we’re more connected to the school, like athletes. Now, the kids can have a more recognizable goal to attain, like scholarships and varsity letters, and greater respect from their classmates.”
He added that, unfortunately, clubs do not get the same recognition as teams, but BHS Principal Chris Jennings and Superintendent of School Sal Gongalves saw the importance of having a group of dedicated students, exemplifying the excellence of a robotic program, as a team.

“And we’re recognized for making it to the state tournament last year,” he said. “But our goal is to be recognized nationally.”
This, Warholak said, is doable.
“Through tournament play, you move up in ranking,” he continued. “We did very well in our last meet. We were 18th out of 37 high schools. We’re ranked 44th out of 151 teams in our mid-Atlantic region.”

This region, he said, covers New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania. and New York. He gestured toward the student classroom activity around the immobile Hammerdown.

“What we’re doing is making a robot that will place cones and inflatable cubes in designated areas to score points,” he said, “and additional points are scored when a robot balances on a pivoting table.”

The facilities hosting robotic competitions are considerable in size because robots are far from stationary mechanicals. They can really motor, at considerable speed, as the Bloomfield team would demonstrate on the second floor of the school.
The robots, or bots, can operate autonomously and must, in competition, for 15 seconds. Then, for 2 minutes 15 seconds, it receives commands from a player. After this 2 minutes 30 seconds competition, another competition starts.

A competition, Warholak said, is three robots against three robots. A group of three robots is called an alliance. Alliances are scrambled after each competition. An alliance will win a match, but it is the school’s robot that accrues the points from each match. At the end, a robot’s points are totaled for a school’s ranking.

The first robot competition this year was March 11-12, at Mount Olive High School, in Morris County. The second and final competition this school year will be this weekend, at Seneca High School, in Tabernacle in Burlington County.

Warholak said the Friday night before a meet is the load-in when the robot is brought to the competition venue. It gets registered, weighed and inspected. The maximum weight for a robot is 125 lbs. Each team is given a pit area where the robot is checked and repaired, much like in auto racing. And there is considerable camaraderie in robot culture.

“Robotic teams bust their hump to keep another team on the field,” Warholak said. “You don’t see that in football.”
When it came time for testing the robot on the second floor, several kids slowly pushed it toward the classroom door, but the carefully constructed and programmed contraption smacked into the door frame. The kids froze and turned to Warholak. Shaking his head, he implored them to be more careful.

Around the corner of the classroom was a nice straightaway. The robot jumped to life with the quickness of a freed squirrel and moved surprisingly fast down the hallway. The linoleum floor was not the best surface for traction, but watching the robot approach a table on which was placed a cone, extending its arms, collecting the cone, retracting its arms, turning in a flash and racing back up the hallway, placing the cone onto another platform, was an eye-opener. Warholak said the team has about 30 members and the entry fee for the two competitions was $6,000. Hammerdown, itself, cost about $3,000 to make.

“These are not toys,” Warholak said. “These are real robots. The components are industrial.”
He said the Bloomfield Board of Education has helped the team meet its fiscal responsibilities.

“The district is very positive about technology and STEM,” he said. “We couldn’t have pulled this off without the support of the superintendent.”