Printer Friendly Version - Valley Students Finish Strong at State’s 2016 Robotics’ Competition

A few members of Valley Regional High School’s Robotics team Human Error pose for a photo: From left (front) are Meagan Gephart, Sam Paulson, Cooper Robbins, Rocket Otte, and Patrick Myslik; (back) Nolan Tackett, Ethan West, Tanner Aikens; and lying down in front, Sam Griswold. Photo courtesy of Michelle Paulson

Valley Regional High School (VRHS) was among 40 teams from Connecticut and Massachusetts that convened at two weekend-long First Robotics’ Competitions (FRC) New England held in March and April. The April event took place at Hartford Public High School from April 1 to 3.

In only its second year with a robotics team, VRHS’s team Human Error took second place at the March competition held in Waterbury, beating out nearly 30 other teams. On the first day of the Hartford event, Human Error placed second overall, but ultimately dropped in rank on the final day just missing the cut to advance. Last year, Valley’s team was awarded Rookie of the Year.

“It’s a little disappointing that we didn’t get picked for an alliance in order to advance, but we accomplished every one of our goals set for the robot we built and we all feel really good about that,” said Valley sophomore Rocket Otte.

Otte described the competition experience as “electric” and “exciting” and like no other. He said that in this, his first time with the Valley team, he really appreciated the spirit of cooperation among all the teams.

“I really like how FRC organizes their events. They have this term called ‘gracious professionalism’ where they encourage all the teams to cooperate with each other in alliances and helping out with tools and equipment. If you’re missing a part you can post it and other teams will help out regardless. That’s really cool.”

Human Error, made up of about 30 students, spent more than 200 hours working after school and on weekends to build and refine the robot’s functionality. Each member or specific group works on a particular aspect of the robot, from sensors to gears to bumpers to programming, using math, science, logic, and other educational disciplines. The key is teamwork, however.

“Working collaboratively and coordinating skills and talents is what happens in this space. Students determine themselves who does what to get the robot working, they organize themselves; the other teachers, mentors, and myself are on the sidelines offering guidance and support when needed,” explained Valley biology teacher Dr. Peano.

Another key element to the team is programming skills. This year that effort was lead by rookie member and sophomore Sam Paulson, who worked in the Java programming language to accomplish the task of instructing the robot’s functions, programming it to drive and move its metal arm.

“Programming is something I learned myself with online sites and it’s something that interests me, so when I joined the team I offered to work on that. I learned programming the robot to drive is easier than programming the arm to move,” said Paulson.

He added, “I learned a lot this year and I’ll be able to do a lot more next year like make the robot do more complex tasks. But for this year I was content with what our team did and how the robot worked.”

The Valley Regional High School Human Error team included Alexandro Adamson, Tanner Aikens, Samantha Bartlett, Ian Bott, Matt Caron, Allie Champion, Gavin Collins, Jaedyn Correa, Jared Dompier, Meagan Gephart, Samuel Griswold, Michael Johnson, Nate Luscomb, Patrick Myslik, Nicholas Otte, Samuel Paulson, Cooper Robbins, Francis Stino, Sam Swap, Nolan Tackett, and Ethan West.