It’s about one week before the Robot Rumble, and East Leyden High School’s engineering club has yet to finish their two machines, dubbed “Diesel” and “Shredder 2.0.”
Team leader Brandon Ripka, 16, and his peers hover over Diesel, a steel-framed robot that lies still at the center of a small worktable. Ripka runs through strategy, progress and priorities, and eager pairs of hands reach for tools, scissors and electric tape to fix the machine’s battery, reattach the wires and retest its kill switch.
Shredder 2.0, on the other hand, is still coming together. Bartos, 15, and his team, switch back and forth from the blueprint to the model and calculate their next moves.
This year’s Robot Rumble competition, which has 30 entries from 30 different schools across the Midwest, is set to take place at Rolling Meadows High School on Feb. 6.
For the last four years, East and West Leyden have both entered in the event, which proves to be a test for their students’ design, building and math skills, said Frank Holthouse, Industrial Technology Department Chair at East Leyden.
He added the competition is similar to a wrestling match, where two robots go head-to-head for about five minutes in a steel cage.
While points are often awarded for offensive and defensive attacks, the ultimate goal is to paralyze the opponent’s robot by knocking out its electronics to create a structural failure, Holthouse said.
Ripka and Bartos said since the beginning of the school year, their teams have met to work on the robots, and one of the most challenging aspects of designing and building them is meeting the weight and safety requirements.
Because Diesel is a “pusher bot” — a robot that aims to push and pin its opponent up against the cage’s wall — it can only weigh up to 80 pounds, while more “aggressive” machines like Shredder can max out at 60.
Continuously revising designs and using different materials has helped the team reach its target weights, Ripka said, but it has also raised concerns on how durable and protected their robots will be when charged at.
Bartos said he and his team are already equipped with several spare parts just in case Shredder’s weapon, a rotating steel bar, doesn’t remain secure in its place, especially after clashing into its rival.
Holthouse, Ripka and Bartos said that process of trial and error is all a part of the fun, and the structural evolution of their robots from the beginning to the present is “cool to see.”
“I love doing this,” Ripka said. He added his own collection of remote control models made him more curious about how things work.
While Ripka and Bartos said they are nervous for their bots to battle, they are excited to see their teams’ hard work and passion come together, no matter the outcome.
“[The competition] can go either way,” Bartos said, noting “failing or succeeding” are all just a part of the learning process.
F. Amanda Tugade is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
