While many students celebrated the lack of classes over winter break, a group of Esquimalt High students instead started fervently building a robot.
Already dedicated to the craft of robotics, the Atom Smashers club members dedicated time to brainstorming,
“The kids have really been buckling down and getting their stuff together,” mentor and coach Tina O’Keeffe said.
The Esquimalt Atom Smashers includes two competition streams – FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) where the school has two teams competing.
“This year we have over 30 members on the team, with 15 on FTC and everyone participating in FRC in March,” O’Keeffe said.
In both cases, high school students start with a kit, then design, program and build an industrial-sized robot to play a game, competing on a themed field. Teams also create an identity, raise funds and advance appreciation for science, technology and math in the community – aligning with the competition creator, international youth organization, FIRST (For Inspiration, Recognition of Science and Technology).
“It’s not just building a robot, it’s about understanding the whole concept of … brainstorm through design, and building and trying and rebuilding to get to where they need to be,” O’Keeffe said. “The biggest thing for us is it’s so much more than robots for the kids.”
It’s about being part of a team, time management, organization, project development, running a business with a $50,000 budget for two teams plus raising that money through both sponsorship and fundraisers in the community.
Students enrolled can earn credits for robotics in grades 9 through 12.
“The amount of hours these kids put in it’s worth a class. And the stuff they do meets all the curriculum guidelines as well so it makes sense,” O’Keeffe said.
FTC work started in September with brainstorming, prototyping and building on this year’s Into the Deep theme.
“We’re floating through in both of them (FTC and FRC) with an underwater theme,” O’Keeffe said, not willing to give away specifics.
St. Margaret's School in Saanich hosts both the FTC qualifier on Jan. 25 and provincial championships Feb. 22 and 23.
“We’d love it if people come and cheer us on,” O’Keeffe said. “It’s great to share with people, little kids love seeing robots adults love seeing robots.”
The FTC competition includes teams from Esquimalt High, Spectrum Community School, Reynolds Secondary School, Mount Douglas Secondary School, St. Margarets School and community team FIX-IT. Seven teams advance to provincials.
The FRC competition kicked off Jan. 4 with more than 20 team members at the high school putting in a full Saturday starting to prototype ideas for the build that is coming this week. About 20 kids spent the weekend prototyping different designs crafted out of wood pieces. The game this year includes hanging, moving pvc pipe and moving a ball, all things the team trialed with their wood proxies. The team has seven weeks to complete the task of designing, building and testing a robot that meets the criteria set out for this year's game.
The Atom Smashers enters its seventh year of FRC culminating with an international competition in Vancouver at the Pacific Coliseum from Feb. 26 to March 1. Spectrum is also competing.
Both events need volunteers, anyone interested can connect with Christine Nicholls by emailing cnicholls@firstpartners.org.
Learn more about the Esquimalt teams online at esquimaltatomsmashers.ca.
