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Pittsburg High School students Kemaiya Bishop, 17, front, and Nevada Reno,... ( DAN ROSENSTRAUCH )

 

PITTSBURG -- It was an unveiling of the sci-fi kind.

Pittsburg High's robotics team recently introduced its new robot to the public.

After six weeks of relentless building, Robotics Team 5430 finished its entry for the 2016 FIRST Stronghold competition. "Students have been extremely diligent on the completion components of this robot, staying after school, giving up their weekends and working extra hours during school holidays," Nicky Mora, a Pittsburg Unified School District communications specialist, said in a news release.

Established in 2014, the student team is led by teachers Jack Gillespie and Beth Traub. The pair are said to "inspire students to explore the world of engineering by setting up their classes with a mindset of a small business. The ultimate goal of the program is to open up the students' creativity and give them knowledge and experiences that are aimed at inspiring future engineers."

PHS's team was excited to share its creation.

The reveal included a demo on how the team designed the robot and info on it was built.

"The students did a great job and the robot was able to be shown off," Traub said.

There are 31 students in the program and all had a hand in the building of the yet-to-be named robot. However, a core mechanical sub team of about 10 to 15 students were the key players in "actual physical robot building," which took six weeks from concept to creation to complete.

For the competition, the robot has to be able to play the "Stronghold" game.

"(Our) robot is designed and programmed with autonomous mode and driver control, and the robot shoots and drives around," Traub explained. "There is also depressors on the robot to be able to manipulate game elements. And, they are still attempting to design a climbing mechanism."

The six-week project was laborious and filled with many challenges.

"Everything we did had to be done at least four to six times -- create, take it apart, fix, put back together, oops, repeat this process," Traub said.

"The kids had no experience with lab view programming, and had to learn fast! Some had never used power drills or milling machines, (with) many others with limited experience with tools and construction."

The team built everything from scratch from ideas the students "could reverse engineer."

The teaching duo helped with organizing thoughts, design overview and how tools/concepts worked, "but everything was fully designed, built, programmed and tested by the students."

"My favorite (aspect) is being able to watch these kids grow and take on amazing things, and become technical experts," Traub said.

"I have students from some of the first few years I taught robotics who keep in contact, and they stop me at the gym or in a store just to tell me about the project they're working on now in college, or how they are doing and accomplishing their dreams."

Aside from team and robot building, Traub said students are honing solid skills, such as computer modeling, website and computer programming, hands-on building practice, electronics soldering and connecting, metal and wood machining, public speaking and more.

"They are running a small mechanical-production corporation with a yearly operating budget of $15,000-$20,000. They make the money themselves by sponsorship and fundraising."

The robotics team is sponsored by Dow Chemical, Pittsburg Power Company, Bishop Wisecarver, NRG, Soroptimists, Hunter Hawk, Acorn Storage, Pittsburg Unified School District, and Jack and Lyn Gillespie.

Reach Trine Gallegos at TrineG@att.net