The product of parts, carefully crafted and tuned, operating in harmony.
Those words describe the competitive robot built by Kardia Robotics, which operates so well that it has taken the team of students who built it to the FIRST Tech Championship — an event where the finest robots from across the state face off.
But the parts that propelled Kardia’s robot to victory are more than metal and circuitry.
To come as far as they have, each member of Kardia had to play their own part, synching the precision of a well-oiled machine with the ingenuity of which only people are capable.
Throughout the 2023-24 FIRST Tech Challenge season, Kardia’s team members applied their skills to solve a series of problems, using a unique solution — the robot.
“A lot of people ask us, ‘Do you guys do battle bots?’” said Timothy Tam, Kardia coach and father of team members Brandon and Naomi Tam. “No, this is not battle bots.”
Unlike a battle bot, Kardia’s robot isn’t built to destroy its opponents.
Instead, the robot stacks plastic “pixels” in Tetris-like patterns, launches paper airplanes, and even does pullups.
It performs those tasks in competition with robots designed, built and programmed anew each season by 150 teams from across the state participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge.
The FIRST Tech Challenge — held by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, an international nonprofit youth organization — is an annual competition open to students in grades seven through 12.
Teams let their robots loose in a sportslike arena, where the bots complete physical challenges for points alongside allied and opposing teams.
But the competition comes with a twist — the game itself changes every year, forcing teams to tailor a fresh bot to a new rulebook released at the start of each season.
“The teams basically watch the game video, try to dissect the game and figure out how they want to build a robot that will address the various challenges,” Tam said.
Once the new bot is competition ready, the true test begins.
The robot’s agility and abilities — as well as those of its human operators — are fine-tuned in the roughly 10 qualifier games in which Kardia competes throughout the season.
Each game features periods when the robots operate autonomously, relying on programming to steer them through challenges, as well as driver control periods, when a pair of team members guide the bot’s movements via remote control.
Qualifier competitions also feature a panel of judges that reviews teams and gives out awards.
Those include the Innovate Award, which celebrates particularly inventive robot designs, or the prestigious Inspire Award, given to a top contending team that judges feel serves as an inspiration for all other teams.
State championship
The state season culminates Pennsylvania’s FIRST Tech Championship, where Kardia is headed for the first time in four years.
Thirty-six teams vie for the title of winning alliance, as well as various awards at the state championship March 16 and 17 at the Saucon Valley Middle School in Hellertown, Northampton County.
The four highest performing teams from the Pennsylvania championship will head to Houston in April to compete in the FTC World Championship.
Kardia’s team members believe that this year, they have a shot at going all the way to worlds.
This year’s team consists of 11 homeschooled students from Berks and Lancaster counties as well as five adult coaches and mentors.
Tam said Kardia Robotics started eight years ago, when his oldest son was in seventh grade.
“Being homeschooled, one of the challenges is trying to provide interactive, collaborative opportunities for kids, especially as they get older,” Timothy Tam said.
He said the parents in his homeschool learning co-op, Kardia Learning Center, got together to brainstorm activities for kids.
“One of the dads actually found out about FIRST, and we said, ‘Oh, let’s try starting a team,’” Tam said. “None of us had any engineering background, but we all had the common desire to start something for our kids.”
Kardia Robotics grew over the years, attracting new members, as well as mentors and sponsors with engineering and programming expertise.
Team practice
Tam said Kardia is Greek for “heart.”
The display of heart was obvious when team members braved snowy February roads to hold a practice session at the Leesport home of Jim Rumbaugh, a volunteer with FIRST.
Team members and coaches gathered in a room outfitted with a 12-by-12-foot robot arena, preparing their bot for a practice run.
The bot itself looks something like a miniature Mars rover, its circuitry and mechanics housed within a rectangular chassis on four omnidirectional wheels.
Extending from the chassis is a grabber claw designed to pick up plastic “pixels” and place them on a board to score points.
Kardia’s bot has a hidden talent.
By wrapping the claw arm around a pole and lifting off the ground, the bot can do pullups, earning the team extra points.
Hard at work perfecting the code for the claw was Kardia’s programming team of Tristan Momose, 15; Jed Gonyea, 15; and James Tiffany, 14.
Momose said he joined the team last year after hearing about it from friends.
“I actually really liked it,” Momose said. “I want to be a robotics engineer and I thought this could be a good start.”
Tam said that unlike other teams, where coding can be an individualized process done by older students, Kardia’s programmers work together to tailor the code.
“These guys somehow picked it quickly and they work together, they all contribute,” Tam said. “It’s pretty cool.”
The code is written in the programming language Java, with Kardia’s programmers using GitHub, a digital platform for code developers, to store and share code when they can’t meet in person.
Momose noted that the programming team has a nickname — TJJ, which stands for “Tech Java Juggernauts.”
Programming the bot involves the encoding of complex tasks beyond driving and movement, like using distance sensors to autonomously locate an object placed randomly in the arena.
“None of us alone could have made the entire robot, at least on time,” Gonyea said.
Drive team
Once the bot was programmed and ready to drive, it sprang to life with a friendly whistle and chirp reminiscent of the famed “Star Wars” robot R2D2.
With smooth movements sharpened by months of practice, drive team member Tyler Newman steered the bot around the arena, grabbing game pieces from Gonyea and taking them to a board to score.
Tam noted that each member of the drive team served a unique role, with Newman navigating the bot, Noah Naugle controlling the claw and Brandon Tam watching the field and shouting out obstacles.
Drive team member Drew Fisher is a behind-the-scenes inventory expert, able to quickly locate parts that malfunction during a game, much like a pit crew member in motor sports, Tam said.
Brandon Tam and others also had a large role in creating the bot, serving on the design team.
Newman noted the bot’s parts were custom designed using CAD, or computer aided design.
“Everything on this robot is custom manufactured except for the drive train,” Newman said.
The designs were brought to life using 3D printing and metal fabrication with the help of local sponsors like Iron Mountains LLC, Reading Bakery Systems and SOLO Laboratories Inc.
Ric Watts, mechanical engineer with Reading Bakery Systems, said he worked on developing the bot’s paper plane launcher with his son Samuel Watts.
Robots that can successfully launch a paper plane in competitions earn extra points.
“He (Samuel) just started making all kinds of different planes to see which one would fly,” Watts said. “Probably 20 or 30 different designs.”
The next step was to create a launching rail that uses a rubber band to propel the plane and fine-tune the launching angle.
Newman noted there is a strategy behind how a robot is designed.
He said teams are assigned alliances with other teams during competitions, so some choose to specialize in certain ways to score.
“Maybe you just want to shoot the airplane and not grab the pixels,” Newman said. “Our robot can do both. We’re basically a robot that can carry certain teams.”
Benefits of competing
Watts noted the team spends at least two to three hours per week in meetings and practices over the course of a season, honing the robot’s functionality.
The benefits of spending that time are vast. In addition to having access to tens of millions of dollars in scholarships through FIRST, students who participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge develop skills in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, and learn the value of hard work and collaboration, according to FIRST Pennsylvania’s website.
For Mia Moore and Naomi Tam, members of the Kardia Robotics marketing team, the value of being part of Kardia extends beyond STEM experience.
Moore said the marketing team does things like reaching out to potential sponsors and organizing outreach events introducing robotics and STEM to students.
“Public speaking is one of (my interests), and I do a lot of that here,” Moore said.
For one outreach event, the team took their robot to 12th and Marion Elementary School in Reading, where more than 50 students got to drive the bot and learn about STEM and robotics.
“Many of these kids do not have access to STEM opportunities,” Moore noted.
Tam noted that everyone on the team has a role, and they all have a hand in ensuring the team’s success.
“They all play a crucial role,” Tam said.
Source: Berkshire mont
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