Underdog Decatur High School Robotics Team Surprises Favorites to Win Peachtree Regional-- Advances to World Robotics Championship in St. Louis

An alliance of robots led by the Decatur High School robotics team, Global Dynamics, won first place in the Peachtree Regional FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) on Saturday, and the team will now advance to compete at the international competition April 24-27.

The March 14-16 competition at the Gwinnett Civic Center drew 60 teams from the region, including Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, and South Carolina. In the final matchup, Global Dynamics, Team 4026, won a best-of-three round with Team 4080, Reboot, a home-school team from Atlanta, and Team 3489, Category 5, of North Charleston, SC. By winning the tournament, all three teams qualify to compete for the World Championship event in St. Louis April 24 – 27 at the Edward Jones Dome, in Saint Louis, Missouri. More than 300 FRC teams from the U.S. Canada, Mexico, and other countries are expected to compete.

The teams spent six weeks designing, prototyping, and building their robots to complete this year’s challenge, Ultimate Ascent, starting with the FIRST Robotics Competition kick-off on January 5^th 2013. Robots used a combination of custom-fabricated materials, industrial controllers/actuators, sensors, and motors to create a 120- pound machine designed to shoot discs up to 50 feet into 10-foot tall goals and to climb a 10-foot tall pyramid structure at the end of a match. Teams competed in alliances of three, with six robots competing on the field at a time.

DHS Robotics team captain Adam Garlow said the team's robot was "designed for speed, maneuverability and accurate disc shooting. We have a hook for climbing
the pyramid for 10 points; however, the focus is on high percentage shooting in the 2-and 3-point zones. We purposefully designed our robot to be shorter than 28 inches so that it could drive underneath the pyramid and take the most direct path to the dispensers and goals. The robot is equipped with a potentiometer sensor that enables it to line up shots at known angles from known distances.”

The Global Dynamics robot design won the tournament's Delphi Engineering award, which recognizes engineering elegance that reinforces the principles of FIRST.

The team is grateful for the support of our wonderful sponsors. In order to attend the championship event in April, the team will need to raise an additional $15,000 for travel, lodging, and registration costs.

Team Sponsors include Johnson Research and Development, GE Energy, Teradata Corporation, Kimberly Clark Corporation, DeVry University, JCPenney, Lockheed Martin, Stability Engineering, Path Scientific, and Georgia STEM Education Alliance.

Team mentors and advisors are led by head coach Jeremy Roberts of Qcept Technologies, joined by coaches David Schaar, Decatur High School teacher, and Sarah Roberts,
a teacher with Youth Engaged in Science YES!). Engineering mentors include Mike Yarnold of GE Energy; DHS parent Lew Lefton, a Georgia Tech faculty member; parent Ken Craig of Turner Broadcasting; and Tahri Turner, a mechatronics student at Southern Polytechnic State University. Parent mentors include Robert Herndon, Kris Lewis, and Denise Garlow.

Students on the team include: Adam Garlow, J.T. Herndon, Daniel Easley, Billy Jacobsen, Akash Gudiseva, Darien Craig, Evan O'Brien, Nandi Salahuddin, Tony Loggins, Natalia Valenzuela, Max Brandwine, Danielle Major, Ruby Lewis, Simon Bell, Devon Holloway, Brandon Byars, James Weigle, Chloe Zhao, Conor Lacey, David Rigdon, and Jonathan Saenger.

Businesses, organizations, or individuals interested in helping to sponsor Global Dynamics’ trip to the 2013 FIRST World Championship should contact Jeremy Roberts jeremybob@gmail.com or Kris Lewis krisllewis@gmail.com.

The U.S. FIRST competition was started to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.