John Jay’s Robotics Teams Take Top Spots In Qualifier

CROSS RIVER, NY — John Jay’s two robotics teams placed first and second in the Hudson Valley regional qualifier of the FIRST Tech Challenge held at Yonkers’ Riverside High School January 20. Both teams will proceed to the regional championships at Pace University Sunday, Feb. 11. John Jay also won the PTC Design Award for incorporating industrial design elements into their solution.

The team members are in John Jay High School’s robotics classes or the Robotics Club.

Steve Zoeller, robotics and engineering teacher at the high school, credits the success of the robotics teams to creativity, persistence, and collaboration as well as solid technology education.

“The students have been working hard in class, after school during Robotics Club and during monthly weekend builds,” said Zoeller. “They even took the robots home during breaks and snow days to get a competitive edge.”

Technology education at John Jay has also evolved over the last few years, according to a spokeswoman. The department has implemented four-year sequences in design, engineering and computer science. Robotics is a capstone class that allows students to apply what they've learned throughout high school.

“The success of the robots’ autonomous mode in competition was that the software engineers came into robotics class knowing how to code in Java after taking some of our programming classes,” said Zoeller. “They built innovative, highly reliable, engineering marvels."

FIRST Tech Challenge tournaments are 10-hour events. They begin with an inspection of the robots’ hardware and software and a 15-minute interview by a panel of judges, followed by a series of matches in which robots complete a number of tasks.

During the 30-second autonomous mode, students’ preprogrammed robots attempt to knock off the opposing team’s “jewel” determined by a color sensor, an Android camera, encoders and distance sensors.

During the two-minute tele-op mode, students control the robot with game controllers to collect cubes called glyphs and fill a “Cryptobox” with 12 blocks. Bonuses are awarded for filling them in a specific pattern.

In a complicated alliance strategy session, the four top teams had to collaborate with other teams. While John Jay hoped to ally with The Techno Chix, the Girl Scouts of the Hudson Valley's team, they were selected by another alliance. John Jay partnered with the Mamaroneck Tigers and were undefeated in the final rounds to win the event.

FIRST Tech Challenge is an international high school robotics competition for students in grades 7 - 12. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” Students design and build a robot using aluminum, polycarbonate, motors and servos, sensors and a variety of other materials. They program and control it using Android Smartphones with Java or AppInventor.

Photo credit: Katonah-Lewisboro School District.