Robotics Rules: How the Crandroids are Taking On the World.

Competitive scholastic robotics has rapidly become an international phenomenon, drawing passionate science and math students into complex projects and local, state, and national competitions. Cranbrook Schools’ own robotics program, which offers opportunities ranging from beta testing new Lego robot “brains” at the lower school to partnerships with local universities, has produced scores of championship teams over the years.

 

This season, Cranbrook’s robotics teams, the “Crandroids,” have amassed an impressive record of successes in international championships.

Eleven robotics teams from Cranbrook Schools competed at the VEX 2013 World Championships in Anaheim, CA. Four upper school teams and two middle school teams qualified for the 2013 World Championships at various tournament events around the United States that took place during the 2012-13 year. Cranbrook’s Championship Teams competed with/against the best of the best, the top 5% of teams from 24 countries around the world, with custom built and programmed robots in this year’s challenge: “Sack Attack” – with the object of the game to attain a higher score than the opponents by scoring sacks in colored floor goals, troughs and high goals.

 

Congratulations to Cranbrook’s four VEX World Championship High School Teams:

Team 36 – Unidentified (Branden Carlson, Jacob Feord, Naveen Karthik, Kevin Katz, Eric Modell, and Zach Samet)

Team 37 – Athena Rising (Katherine Blake, Amelia Covert, Stacey Harimoto, Meghna Menon, Lexie Ritter, and Christina Roualet)

Team 38 – Vexellent (Clay Kramp, Jon Pang, Joe St.Germain, and Anthony Wang)

Team 39 – Zip Ties (Dom DiPietro, John Montgomery, Chayce Rodriguez, Nathan Tometich, and Miranda Weismantel)

 

The talented engineers on Cranbrook’s VEX World Championship Middle School qualifying teams demonstrated integrity and honesty in the Driver Control Contest. Cranbrook’s core values were at the forefront of this competition and the coaches couldn’t be more proud of:

Team 35 – Monocle Alliance (Michael Bian and Ausar Mundra)

Team 35C – Coriolis Effect (Nikhil Baddam, Jacob Barber, Ryan Neff, and Derek Joslin)

Budding scientists, mathematicians, and engineers on Cranbrook teams at the lower and middle school competed at the first-ever VEX IQ Challenge World Championship for students aged 8 to 14 years old. Students, with guidance from their coaches and mentors, built a robot using the VEX IQ robotics platform to solve an engineering challenge that is presented in the form of a game. VEX IQ Challenge teams worked together scoring points in Teamwork Matches, and also displayed their robot’s skills individually in Driver Controlled and Skills Challenges. In addition to building robots, students actively learned about science, technology, engineering and mathematics with a STEM themed research project that consisted of a written or media presentation that was presented to a judging panel for review. (RobotEvents.com) Five teams, of fourth through seventh grade students, represented Cranbrook:

 

Team 35D – CranDROIDS (Ram Davuluri and Jessica Newton)

Team 35H – Bertie Bots (Saaim Khan, Ethan Kumar and Nikhil Vasan)

Team 35J – Jurassic Spark (Dylan He and Olivia Sui)

Team 35S – Short Circuits (Swathi Karthik, Aumar Mundra, and Paige Tar)

Team 35T – Army of Two (Alex Harimoto and Jennifer Newton)

 

Team 35J “Jurassic Spark” qualified for the Championship Tournament finals, and Team 35D - CranDROIDS took home the VEX IQ 2013 Innovate Award World Champions trophy. Read the full story about the competition and awards here.

 Teams from 37 countries around the globe descended upon St. Louis, MO for the 2013 FTC World Championships at the end of April. Cranbrook’s FTC Team 39 – The Gingerbread Men - qualified to compete with this elite group of teams from around the world. This year’s challenge: “use a combination of motors, controllers, wireless communications, metal gears, and sensors, including infrared tracking (IR), to design, build, and program robots to compete in an Alliance format against other teams. The object of this year’s game, named RING IT UP!, is to score more points than an opponent by placing plastic rings onto pegs on a center rack. Teams were challenged to detect special “weighted” rings to earn them bonus points. Matches lasted two minutes and 30 seconds, and began with a 30-second autonomous period followed by a two-minute driver-controlled period. The final 30 seconds of the driver-controlled period was the “end game,” where each team could score bonus points by lifting up their Alliance partner’s robot off the game floor to a maximum height of 24 inches. (http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/)

 

The Coaches were very proud of Team 39’s problem solving efforts and teamwork in spite of the field challenges encountered over the course of the event. Approximately 2,500 FIRST Tech Challenge teams competed during the 2012/2013 FTC season placing “The Gingerbread Men” in the top 3% in the world. Congratulations Josh Spigelman, Grant Glover, Alex Rosenberg, and Adam Cutler.