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Robotics Team Seeks Automatic Success

Tribune photo by JASON BEHNKEN

Hillsborough High junior Callen Votzke, right, works on disassembling a test robot. A school team is building a robot to enter in competition.

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 18, 2008

Updated: 02/17/2008 11:56 pm

TAMPA - Chalk tap, tap, tapped on the board as Wendy Hou scrawled circles, angles and numbers in a search for the right equation.

Just how far does a robotic arm need to extend?

"Math is nice and theoretical and is supposed to work and somehow it doesn't," said Hou, an 18-year-old Hillsborough High School senior and robotics team member. "It's a puzzle."

The rookie team has been building a 5-foot-tall, 129-pound robot to enter in the fifth annual Palmetto Regional FIRST Robotics Competition at Clemson University in South Carolina on March 28-29. FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter.

About 40 teams from South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida will compete at Clemson for bragging rights and a trophy. A national competition will be April 17-19 in Atlanta's Georgia Dome.

"It basically boils down to your robot doing something faster or more efficiently than the other robots," Hillsborough senior Sarah Morrissey said. "It's like a sports competition."

Kathy Steele

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