Student Standouts for February 16, 2024

By Arjun Puri ’25 and Charlie Glass ’25

Each year, the MICDS Chess Club participates in the Gateway Chess League, a longitudinal team competition featuring high schools from around the St. Louis area. Following two semifinal finishes in the previous two years, the MICDS Chess Club entered this season, ready to cement our status as a consistently top team in the league.

Rampire competed in this year’s FIRST Tech Challenge competition, CENTERSTAGE. It was the most complicated robotics game anyone on the team had participated in. Teams scored points primarily by placing hexagonal tiles called pixels onto a slanted board that could hold the pixels called the backdrop. Teams could gain additional points for making specific patterns with the pixels on the board, or by stacking pixels high up. However, teams could also score points by accurately launching a paper airplane with their robot, and by making the robot hold itself up, suspended off the ground, grappling from the truss in the middle of the arena. Rampire worked right up until the last competition improving our robot to try to place pixels consistently and efficiently into the backdrop and to suspend from the truss.

At the start of the season, we used cardboard to prototype designs for the robot’s different parts. We started with a basic chassis that was only a rectangular metal frame with wheels. The first component we added to the robot was a rolling intake system, so that by driving over a pixel on the floor, the robot could pick the pixel up and store it in a storage space inside the robot. We planned to have another component, a clawed arm, that would transfer the pixels from the storage ramp to the backdrop for points. Another strategy we decided on was to try to make the robot short enough to fit underneath the central truss, because moving around the truss increased the distance the robot had to travel to place pixels, and the pathway around the truss was difficult to maneuver while the route under the truss was relatively simple. The height limit of less than 14 inches tall was one of the most difficult constraints to work around, since there were so many components on the robot, and the arm for placing pixels on the board and the suspension mechanism both needed to be able to reach up much higher than 14 inches for a competitive amount of points.

At the first competition, our robot only had the ability to push pixels across the ground into the low-scoring area, as we had not yet finished the arm, hanging mechanism, or paper airplane launcher. At our second competition, we were still primarily pushing pixels, but we had also coded the robot so we could score during the portion of the competition where the robots moved from code, as opposed to the rest of the competition where a driver controlled the robot’s actions with a controller. At those first two competitions, we saw other teams with arm designs for placing pixels, but the highest-scoring teams used a bucket instead of a claw on their arms for more control over how they released pixels onto the board. We adapted the bucket ideas we had seen from other teams for the next competition. The arm itself went through three iterations, using custom 3D printed pieces, gear belts, superglue (ask Andy about the superglue still on his shoes!), and tensioning string to keep it from falling over and tearing apart from its own weight. In the last week of robotics practices, we added the final components for the hanging mechanism so that in the state qualifying competition, our robot could finally do almost everything (unfortunately, our paper airplane designs never flew the right distance). It was a very successful season. Rampire was nominated 3rd place for the Innovate Award for our creative and well-engineered designs. Most importantly, we had a lot of fun experiencing real engineering and building a robot together that we are all proud of.

The 5155 Ramifications team made leaps and bounds of progress and learning during the 2023-2024 season. The mission of this year’s game was to score hexagonal pieces onto a plinko-like board, as well as launching a paper airplane and suspend our robot from a bar in the middle of the field. Our team finished taking seventh place out of 30 teams along with the Control Award which celebrates a team that uses sensors and software to increase the robot’s functionality in the field. This award is given to the team that demonstrates innovative thinking to solve game challenges such as the autonomous operation.

Our team engineered innovative solutions to various missions and learned valuable skills while doing so. We learned how to design a mechanism through research, and presented them to the rest of the members. Then we built prototypes, both out of cardboard and in Onshape, a 3D modeling software.

Most importantly, we learned how to build better relationships within our team and how to collaborate on a six-month-long project. Our team bridges the gap between grades, friend groups, and cliques with some of our best memories made in that lab.

By Travis Menghini, Head Robotics Coach and Upper School Math Teacher

This season, we had 36 students participate in our Upper School Robotics Program, including two Middle School students, Evan Struckman ’29 and Tarik Yagci ’29, who were able to gain early exposure and learn from older members of the ins and outs of the FIRST Tech Challenge. The game was a challenging game, where students had to limit their robot size to under 14 inches (four inches less than a regular year). Both teams started out with a basic robot, with plans and ambitions to accomplish more tasks in the game. After each week of the competition, both teams exemplified the engineering design process with new hypotheses and iterations of their robot. Both teams had a very competitive robot by the end of their season.

Both teams practiced twice a week for four hours in the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Robotics Laboratory and the Biggs Family Maker’s Lab. Although the teams ultimately were competing against each other, our teams collaborated internally to help each other succeed. There were many moments where a student had their hands on the opposite team’s robot in our work calls giving advice or helping out. This ultimately led to the successful 3rd place finish in our League Championship, where both of our teams decided to join each other on the same alliance headed into the Semi-Finals. Although a devastating 1-point loss against the number 1 seeded team, the students walked away with valuable engineering experience as well as gained the personable skills on how to work together as a team.

New additions to our team this year also include two mentors from our community. One mentor who joined us this year was Brain Beardon, a retired AT&T Electronics Engineer. At our last meeting, Beardon stated to the team, “I am most impressed how the leadership of the team functioned. There were clear leaders on the team, and they would never make a decision without consulting younger or less experienced members of the team. It was an impressive atmosphere, and I’m proud of the work you have all done this season.”  Moreover, an alumnus, Liam Weber ’21, also mentored our robotics team, giving back to our program while doing a co-op with a local engineering firm. When Weber asked if he could come out to help mentor the team he told me on the phone that “my time in the robotics lab was the time I enjoyed most while at MICDS. I would love it if I could come back and mentor the team and help them engineer a competitive robot.”

Overall, it was a great season, and the team gained some valuable engineering experience. This was not only a great year for our team competitively, but also culturally for our teams that bred a new collaborative atmosphere together!