Junior gains unique memories, life skills from robotics

On Jan. 9, the school’s For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) robotics team, M-SET FISH, received its challenge for the year: to design a robot that can shoot balls into an opponent’s castle, defend itself from other robots and climb to the top of the other team’s castle in order to score extra points. The team is now focusing on using these six weeks, the “build season,” to make this robot.

Key to this effort are electronics team member Samay Garg, a junior, and electronic head Elizabeth Li, a senior, who will work on wiring every part of the robot, including its sensors and motors.

The team typically spends between 12 and 36 hours per week in the robotics room during build season, usually staying until midnight the night before competitions. Before and on the day of the event, Garg and Li fix parts on the robot if they break, like motors, control elements and wires.

Garg recalled an incident two years ago when a light ring on the robot was shorting out right before they were scheduled to compete. Garg and Li scrambled to fix the wiring and light ring, rushing around the robot with numerous tools in their hands. The two worked quickly together and felt relieved when they finished the repair on time.

“There was a huge cloud of smoke basically covering the bottom of our robot,” Garg said. “It wasn’t bad, it just looked cool and kind of scary.”

Li said she and Garg work well together since both of them are “pretty mellow” and “generally happy people.” They finish jobs quickly because they do not goof off too much, Li said, but they are not too serious either.

Garg began robotics in his freshman year, when he joined the team to spend more time with his friends. In the fall of his first year, he offered to join the electronics team, since there was an open spot after the Class of 2013 graduated. As he tried out the electronics team, he found that he enjoyed it, eventually deciding to stay with it.

Before the build season, the team began preparing for the season in November and December by training their newer members in computer aided design (CAD) and software. Back then, they only met once a week on Sundays.

Now, the team meets four days a week for three to nine hours a day. On weekends, the team builds, designs and programs the robot from noon to 9 p.m. By mid-February, the team will have built two robots, one for practice and the other for competition.

Their dedication has paid off recently, and the program is on the upswing. Last April, the M-SET FISH qualified for the World Championships in St. Louis for the first time in 14 years.

Because the team has many experienced juniors and seniors on the team this year, Garg said he expects it to be a strong year for them. He hopes that his experience and skills he’s picked up in the past three years, from how to wire clean electronics boards to time management, will help him improve this year.

Though he is not planning on pursuing robotics as a career,  Garg would like to join something related to robotics in college, such as a club.

“I’ve made a lot of friends and it’s just a great atmosphere and a great environment to work in,” Garg said. “You can learn a lot of new things, not just engineering-related, but how to work independently, how to work as part of a team and how to make smart decisions.”