Carl Hayden H.S. Robotics Team

FIRST Atlanta 2008 - National Champs

2008-04-22T04:05:00.006-07:00

Atlanta, GA – Thursday 17 April 2008

The Carl Hayden High School Falcon Robotics team landed in Atlanta yesterday. One of our tool crates took a different route and didn't arrive until this morning.

This morning we joined about 350 other high school teams for the International FIRST robotics championship. There are also hundreds of elementary school teams that will be competing in the FIRST Lego League championship. Atlanta is buzzing with roboteers.

Out tardy tool chest delayed us a bit this morning. We uncrated "Virginia's Dream" and modified her ball-picking-up mechanism (or whatever it is called). We want her to be able to pick up a 40 inch diameter ball, carry it, and then shoot it over a 6 ½ foot bridge. In the last competition, we had to align up right in front of the ball to scoop it up. Now we are able to grab it a lot faster and easier.

We have to pass an inspection. One of the requirements so to weigh under 120 pounds. Our robot tipped the scales at 121 lbs. We drilled holes in the last few panels, rounded corners and finally brought her in at 119.8 pounds. She has so many holes she practically whistles when she gets into second gear.

The kids are so well behaved. They are really emoting "gracious professionalism". They realize a lot of people feel they are in contention for the Chairman's Award. Although all of the team works on the projects to make us eligible, only our 3 person team is allowed to make a presentation to the judges at 1:40 tomorrow afternoon. They are prepared.

This competition is truly and international event. There is a group of 50 teachers and students from New Zealand. They are here to experience the event and they will return to "Kiwiland" to form teams and they will have a regional completion there next year. Teacher Mark and student Clinton have been adopted by us and are now a part of our team for the next couple of days. We are learning so much about the land down under.

We also met a team from Israel. The members are from a high school in Haifa. The students are immigrants from Ethiopia. Imagine a group of mostly immigrants who live in Arizona talking with a group of immigrants who live in Israel working on robots in Atlanta. Different accents, customs, and religions don't get n the way of a group of kids trying to figure a way to beat some of the fantastic powerhouse robots that will be on the field tomorrow. We are hoping to spend more time with them tomorrow.

How far our kids have come from 35^th ave and Roosevelt.

The Qualifying matches start tomorrow. You can see it live on the internet:

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics...a-finals-2008/ We are in the Archimedes division and we are team 842.

A few odds and ends from a month ago:

When we were in Los Angeles, our local NPR radio station had a reporter interview members of the team. Here is where you can hear that story: Virginia's Dreamy Robot by Marcos Najera for KJZZ.

When we were competing in Las Vegas, the kids were entertained by Terry Fator, the ventriloquist who won the million dollars on America's got Talent Show. One act of his act was on T.V. He was fantastic: http://www.nbc.com/Americas_Got_Talent/video/#mea=133032

We will send a report tomorrow

Atlanta -- Friday, April 18, 2008

The day begins early with cereal for all in the hotel room. We head out to the Georgia Dome for the opening ceremonies. Dean Kamen is inspiring and then introduces a guest speaker, President George Bush (the father) Wow! We were impressed. Yet another moment our kids will never forget.

We were scheduled for the fifth matchin the morning. After the opening cerimonies, the drive team went back to the pit and loaded our robot on the cart and headed for the ¼ mile pathway/tunnel to the arena. Traffic Jam. Literally 100 4 person teams and their robot are lined up in a gridlock. –It took about a half hour for Jerry, Pablo, Will and Ingrid towork teir way up the line only to see our match start without us. Everyone was sorry, but it counted as a match disqualification for us. We were all disappointed, but stayed optimistic.

The second match of the day for us found us without one of our allies so it was a 3 vs 2 match. Our partner tipped over early in the match and we lost. We also lost our third match playing against one of the "superbots".

But then the day improved dramatically.

To be considered for the Chairman's Award, a team has to become a model program: inspiring students everywhere in math, science, engineering and technology. We form grade school teams, high school teams. We give presentation and demonstrations to anyone, anywhere. The kids are inspirational. They have to submit a report to FIRST which is passed on to the judges. Then the kids have to prepare a 5 minute presentation and then the judges ask questions for 5 minutes. Only Regional Chairman winners competed for this most prestigious award at the Championship, so there are 41 other highly regarded teams in the running.

Early on, we had a few strategies we were going to try. Instead of a formal report, we submitted our facts as a diary from a fictional girl in the future describing her father's activities at Carl Hayden High School. We wanted the judges to remember something unique. http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=56173&pagecat=379

For the presentation, we felt there was too little time to build a complete case, and since the judges had all the facts from our written submission anyway, we would hit a couple of our important, unique highlights and spend some time with each of the three students, president Nile, Leidy and Ingrid would tell an andidote on how FIRST has affected themselves. We felt they needed to be believable strike an emotional chord with the judges.

They have been practicing their presentation for 2 months in front of the toughest: Fredi and myself. They always were a little stiff as if they were trying to recite a memorized speech (which it was). We kept trying to get them to have more personality and honest emotion into their performance.

Five minutes before intering the judging room, they were calm but very aware of how important the next few minutes were going to be for them. They knew their stuff and had their props. They just had to be themselves and be confident.

They were called in and we had to wait outside. Almost fifteen minutes passed before they returned – smiling!

"How did it go?"

"They cried."

"What?"

"When Ingrid got to the part of her talk where she says how she never thought engineering was for women, but working with Karen opened her mind to all the possibilities… Ingrid's voice quivered and she started to tear and in a few moments even the judges (2 women and a man) started to tear up along with Leidy."

"Wow!!"

There were several questions that the Falcons answered very well and the judges commented on how the whole team seems to have a passion for the work they are doing.

Anyway, whether the teams is rewarded with a trophy or not, they have done one world class job and we all are so proud of them!

Mable and I were walking up and down the pit area this afternoon (all 360 teams!) when I spotted a judge I recognized, Steve Wozniack, the co founder of Apple and the first real microcomputer! I asked Mable if she wanted to go up to him and ask if he would pose with here for a picture. He wound up talking to her for 10 minutes telling her tales of how he became interested in computers, why the Apple II was the first color computer, the first to draw pixels, etc. She asked what projects he was working on now and they chatted like old friends. Mable and the Woz! She will be telling this sory to her children and grandchildren and will have the pictures to prove it!

The day's competition ended with a couple of wins and there is at least one high ranked team that is seriously considering us as an ally because of our strong defense capabilities and our ability to score well. We have 2 more matches tomorrow morning. If we are picked as ally, we could do well in the Archimedes elimination matches. The winning ally of our division and the winners of the other three division will compete for the International Championship in the afternoon. Well, anyway, there is a slight possibility. At any rate, all of us are hourly enjoying ourselves.

Then there will be the awards.

We just finished surprising Will with a birthday cake. A fitting way to end the evening.

Fredi will be posting pictures at:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=56173&pagecat=453

Atlanta – Sunday, April 20, 2008

"I dream that one day they will no longer be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." proclaimed Atlanta's favorite son, Dr. Martin Luther King. Yesterday afternoon in Atlanta, our kids from Carl Hayden High School's Falcon Robotics team were awarded the highest international engineering honor that can be bestowed upon a high school team: the Chairman's Award. We are celebrating seven years, not of robot building, but how our students have been inspiring others in local neighborhoods (and some quite distant) the hard fun of engineering; performing hundreds upon hundreds of presentations to kindergarteners, governors, civic groups and influencing the culture of our neighborhood, state, country and, perhaps, the world. Our team has been proclaimed a model for those who wish to positively affect their world.

The day began with two losses in the robot competition which placed us near the bottom of our 80 team division. However, a team from Las Vegas, which was ranked 4th, chose us as one of their partners in the 3 vs 3 elimination rounds. They were very aware of our defensive capabilities and being able to score points when needed. They envisioned an alliance of two high scoring robots with a strong defensive robot. We were awesome. We won the quarter final matches and the semi final matches and were finally defeated in the divisional championship matches in a final tie-breaking third round. We were awarded the silver medal.

The Chairman's award was presented to us in front of the tens of thousands in the audience. There was untold number watching the event on the internet and the NASA cable channel. Our whole team then sat on the stage with Dean Kamen, Woody Flowers and the president and CEO of FIRST to watch the remaining robot matches and awards.

The Chairman's Award brings with it a $10,000 scholarship and the kids will decide who on our team will receive it. All the previous year's Chairman teams have been invited to the White House to meet the President and we hope that we will be invited too. We have also been loaned professional video equipment to document our activities and will be working with directors to produce a visual document about our "culture changing" efforts.

We ended the evening at Centennial park which was reserved for the FIRST teams. There we ate, played and celebrated with 300 other teams of exciting, inspiring young people who will change our world.

Our robot this year is named "Virginia's DREAM". We christened her with that name, aware that it was a reference to Dr. King and also as a reference to the DREAM Act, legislation that is currently stalled in the U.S. Congress. The new law would create a route for young people to become legal residents in the United States, the only home they know. Hard working, moral young students who were illegally transplanted into the U.S. as children and who graduate from high school and are willing to pursue college degrees or serve in the armed forces would be valued rather than persecuted. Many of the best students in the U.S., who currently have to live in the shadows, fearing immediate deportation (like Virginia) could contribute and openly be the positive role models to their peers and demonstrate that we judge people by the content of their character rather than their pedigree.

Today the kids will sleep late and then we will do some sightseeing in this historic southern city. Tomorrow we fly back to Phoenix and start preparing for our next event: the National Underwater Robotics Competition (NURC) which we host with Chandler High School and Arizona State University in June.

Here are the people who traveled with us to Atlanta:
Teachers: Fredi Lajvardi, Jim Hagen, Debbie Cameron and Allan Cameron.
Our super mentors: Jerry Little, Karen Suhm and David Medaros
Parents: Mario and Ruby Balboa
Alumnus: Cristian Arcega
Adopted Kiwi friends" Mark and Clinton

Students:
Brittney Childers
David Olivares
Eduardo Fernandez
Fernando Santillan
Hugo Ceballos
Ingrid Tay
John Harris
Judith Beltran
Kathy Garcia
Kelly Morris
Leidy Robledo
Luis Garcia
Mabel Munoz
Mary Cuevas
Michael Brown
Michael Morris
Nilo Thomas
Norma Irigoyen
Pablo Santillan
Sarah Balboa
Yuliana Flores
Will Freer

None of this would happen without the support and encouragement of our business partners:

Honeywell
Arthur M. Blank Foundation
Science Foundation Arizona
Intel
VegasFuel
Wells Fargo
Southwest Fastener
FastSigns
!NVENTIVITY
sead
Microchip

We also are so grateful for the trust and forbearance of parents, teachers and administrators who drive, spend, approve, and tolerate our sometimes irregular requests.

We have many friends who work behind the scenes for us: Steve Sanghi, Marcos Garcia-Acosta, Carmen Cornejo, Josh Davis, Shawna Fletcher, Greg Harrison, Aida Rodriguez, David Lujan, Dayna Steele, Tom Heller and Craig Pletenik.

We also have so many supporters who have adopted us. This email list which was originally intended for the kid's parents when we travel, has grown to over 6oo recipients. I read your emails aloud to the kids and I think they realize more than most, how connected all the people in the world truly are. Thank you.

Fredi, Jim and the kids return to school. My wife and I are going camping for a few days. Then we will return to begin the new season of "changing the culture". Keep us in mind if your group needs some guest speakers. Fredi and I and the kids have a new chapter to present in the Falcon Robotics story.

LasVegas FIRST Regional

2007-04-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 30, 2007 – Las Vegas

The Carl Hayden Robotics club is in Las Vegas for the FIRST Las Vegas Regional competition. We left Phoenix late Wednesday night and drove in a caravan of three school vans, 1 pickup truck and 2 cars. A lot of us have ham radio licenses and we use the radios to play Trivia Pursuit among the vehicles. I think I’m the only one who knew the original McDonald’s hamburgers were 15 cents. I don’t know if I’m proud of knowing that or not, but I am very proud that so many students have earned their FCC licenses.

Yesterday we unpacked our robot which had to be shipped directly from our competition in San Diego. Teams are not allowed to work on their ‘bots between competitions. Little Jerry was in fine shape and we sailed through inspection and we played in the days’ practice rounds.

For the first 15 seconds of a game the robots run autonomously. No driver intervention, just the robot running on its internal program. Not a lot of robots do anything in the first 15 seconds. In San Diego, we had a program that would send Little Jerry half way across the field. We decided to reprogram him to go three fourths of the way across the field and make a 90 turn and proceed to bump into any opposing robots that were attempting to score points. It had to be accomplished in 5 seconds if we wanted to be effective.

Our robot has a second high speed gear, so we set the program to run straight for 3 seconds in high gear. So at the next practice round, Jerry shot across the field and slammed into the far wall at high speed. It was the most excitement the crowd had seen all day. It broke Jerry’s tube lifter, but we replaced it in a few minutes. The officials warned us not to let it happen again.

For the next practice, we had Jerry’s forward run shortened, but he still crossed the field and ran into another robot. No damage, but the officials told us that if it happened again we would be disqualified for the rest of the event. We have decided to forget improving our autonomous high speed run, at least in Las Vegas.

Our plans are to play more defense than we did in San Diego. After the wall crashing, I know a lot of teams will be a little wary of us.

We were told that the Las Vegas competition will be webcast:
http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/
Click on the Las Vegas webcast link after 9am (MST, PDT) Friday and it will be active again 9am Saturday.

Saturday, March 31, 2007 – Las Vegas Day 2

Three wins, three losses and a tie. We are ranked 32 in a field of 51 teams. We have two more seeding matches to play later this morning.

The last match of the day was our best. We were allied with 2 robots that can’t score with the tubes. Our opponents would be two robots who probably would have difficulty scoring and one that could run up a lot of points. We decided that we would play a totally defensive game and try to have one of our robots climb our ramp at the end. Our opponents also had a ramp, but we felt they would have difficulty with a robot climbing it. The game went exactly as we wished. You can view the game here:
http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/nv/ and then click on nv_57.wmv.

One of our losses and our tie was the result of human error. We finished with the high score, but we received a 10 point penalty which changed the outcome of the game. One penalty was an alliance player stepping outside of the player’s box and the other was our fault: our robot after deploying our ramp touched the “foul line”. We had a chain come off of one wheel and it made it difficult for our driver to steer.

One of the judges is Steve Wozniack, cofounder of Apple, and really the engineer of the first popular home computer. He spent time in our pit area talking to the kids who were ”on duty” there. What a thrill!

One student, Kelly, has been wearing the Flacon mascot costume throughout the San Diego and Las Vegas competition. Eight hours a day in the suit, she dances, jumps and keeps the crowd pumped up. It gets really hot in the feather suit and we keep reminding her to drink water and she does, but she really never takes a break. Everyone finds a job on the team and it’s exciting to see how they go way beyond expectations.

Sunday, April 01, 2007 – Phoenix

We had quite a day in Vegas.

We tied one and lost one of our Saturday morning seeding matches. Penalties by our alliance played a part- again. We wound up ranked 34 out of 51 teams. Not very promising. However, the third ranked team picked us as an ally for the regional championship matches. They had watched our strong defense and felt a good defender would compliment their scoring robot.

To move on to the semi finals, an alliance has to defeat the opposing alliance twice. In our first match, we were told to play offence and we did. Our side lost 16 – 84. Strategy was changed and we played defense in the second match and the outcome was a lot better: we won 40-32 and there was a lot of very tough bumping and pushing going on. In the final tie breaker, Our robot drivers played a perfect game. The whole alliance was chanting, “Jerry, Jerry…”. It looked like we won 16-2 and then the announcer said there were some penalties. One of our alliance robots was assessed two ten point penalties so the final score was 0-2 and we were finished for the day.

During the day, several judges returned to the pits and talked to the kids, including the “Woz”. We were beginning to think maybe we would receive one of the safety awards or a judges award. We were shocked at the awards ceremony to be presented with the Engineering Inspiration Award, the second highest award (after the Chairman’s Award. Robot championship is the 3^rd highest). The kids were ecstatic.

One of the criteria for the award is the team’s effect on our school and community. Well, the kids have been very active and they are making a big difference on campus, community and the state of Arizona with all their public speaking/presentations and congressional lobbying.

One incident that the judges liked was the story about the cross country team running to the AZ regional and watching about an hour of play. I just found out from one of the kids that when the cross country boys ran back to school, the coach had seen them on the webcast from the venue. He reprimanded them and had them do pushups. We decided that we have to do something for the X-country guys. The coach is a good guy, but we will have to think of something fun for him too!

In ten days we head off to Atlanta for the International championships. We hope our robot does well, but we have our eye on the top award, the Chairman’s award.

Pictures of our Las Vegas trip at the school page.

Thanks,

Allan

FIRST San Diego 2007

2007-03-25T15:42:00.007-07:00

Thursday March 22, 2007 – San Diego

We left Carl Hayden High School at midnight and drove a dozen girls, Fredi, Jim Haugen and my self along with my wife and mentors Jerry and Karen and arrived at the Ipayone Sports Center at 8 am as the doors opened to let teams in to unpack their robots.

This is the first time we have fielded an “all girls” team and the women are taking charge! Angelica is the driver with Yvette the copilot. Cynthia is the human player on the field and Karen is the coach and forth member on the field.

While there are only four team members on the field, ther rest of the team are assigned pit boss, safety officer, power woman (battery management), electrical repairs, mechanical systems, scouting, strategy, etc. They will all be very busy the next two days.

During robot inspection, one inspector spent a lot of time quizzing the girls and “teaching them”. Fredi was going nuts! “We have never had anyone lecture like that before! The guy is just showing off for the girls. Why doesn’t he inspect the robot and let us fix any deficiencies?” I keep catching myself saying “the Carl Hayden girls team” instead of the Carl Hayden team. This is going to be quite a weekend of the subtle sexism that makes it so hard for some women to feel comfortable in the engineering fields.

We ate dinner at the hotel’s IHOP. Haven’t had time for the beach yet, maybe this evening.

Fredi posted pictures athttp://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=50067&pagecat=313

Friday March 23, 2007 – San Diego

We won two matches and lost six. There will be 3 more seeding matches tomorrow. Around noon, the top 8 seeded teams will pick two other teams to form 8 3-robot alliances. So our only hope to be in the quarter finals is to be picked by another team. So our strategy for tomorrow is to do what we do best – defense. Hopefully, we will be noticed by a team looking to shut down their opposition and will pick the gutsy Falcon team.

Mary Steward is a lady who lives in L.A. and drove down with a friend and young son to meet us. She watched a few matches, including one where our driver, Angelica, was pretty much responsible for the win. Then she spent a lot of time talking to the students in the pit area. Our sophomore girls wanted to know how we knew her and I told them about these emails and that there are a lot of people following their journey. They are amazed that total strangers are interested in them.

Dayna Steele, who is a friend of ours in Texas, has a web site “Smart Girls Rock – because the future has curves” http://www.smartgirlsrock.com/ and I’ve been honored as an Honorary Smart Girl. Hmmmm?

I think the experiment of leaving the boys at school is producing some positive results. The girls have stepped up and were working on repairs, driving, scouting, talking to the judges and are becoming a cohesive team. While they lack experience in some of the skills, I think they are ready to be more assertive and will be challenging the boys for more active positions on the team. We’ll see next week when we compete in Las Vegas.

This evening the FIRST team social was at the Space and Aeronautics museum. My cousin met us there and we gawked and talked and had a great time.

As we were leaving, Marina, one of the girls who wrote the Chairman’s entry, and is a senior said, “I’m going to miss this.” I started in on how she can get involved in projects in college that are just as exciting if she throws herself into it with as much enthusiasm as…” and she interrupted me and said, “No. I’ll miss all you guys.” So here is a young lady who came from Mexico, learned English, does very well in high school, mentors at the junior high school, joins the robotics team, contributes to the region’s championship essay, has been accepted into ASU’s Engineering College and credits the people she has met with her good fortune. The FIRST program has done a lot for our kids.

We still haven’t gone to the beach. We plan on stopping tomorrow when the San Diego FIRST Regional concludes and watch the sun set and have a seafood dinner.

Day two pictures at

http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=50067&pagecat=314

Sunday, March 25, 2007 – Phoenix, AZ

The Falcon Robotics “Chicas – Leave the Boys at Home” tour is over. It was an experience none of us will ever forget.

We knew going into Saturday’s matches, that with 2 wins and 5 loses, that even if we won the remaining three matches, we would probably not be picked by one of the top eight teams to be in their three-team alliance. So we changed our goals to playing defense. Even if we lose, if we can keep the opponents score low, we will demonstrate our value to the choosing teams.

The driving team, coach Karen, Angelica, Cynthia, and Yvette had a fantastic time! They were relaxed and effective. They our ran, out pushed, and in one match, toppled another robot. Our robot, “Little Jerry”, was built strong and fast. We were playing “our game”. The women now had battle driving experience and were cool and relaxed – and happy, even though our opponents out scored us. As a result, we had to pack up after the seeding matches, but the day was a very positive one for us.

We went to Mission Bay beach about 4 pm. Half of the girls had never seen the ocean before. We parked, walked to the strand, took off our shoes and socks and walked doing to the water. (“Oh, the sand feels so soft.”) You know how it goes: first just the toes, then just up to the rolled up cuffs, then, oops now that the cuffs are wet, just go in as far as the knees… until they are completely soaked, teasing the breakers and laughing, screaming and hanging on to each other as kids have been doing for 10s of thousands of years.

My wife Deb brought kites and bubble makers. We were all little kids again. Karen, inventor and engineer, is redesigning the “fish kite” to make it fly better. Fredi and I are snapping pictures, and the kids are having an afternoon they will never forget. Someday they will bring their children to the beach and I bet they will tell them the story of this day.

Fredi’s pictures:

http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=50067&pagecat=315

We ate at Joe’s Crab Shack and then hopped into the vans for the return trip. Fredi and fellow teacher, Jim, had to drive the whole way without relief. We stopped for a half hour nap and arrived at Carl Hayden at 6 am.

Overall, a most successful experiment. We worked on the robot and made many improvements on it. The girls’ skills have made a quantitative leap. During the whole weekend there is a lot of talking, (“How did you meet your spouse?” “What was the hardest part about going to college”. “How did you know what your major was going to be?”) You can see the ladies trying on different possible roles. They are changing their cultural expectations. I don’t think they will settle for doing what is expected of them. We’ll see.

Late next Wednesday night, we take the coed team to the Las Vegas FIRST regional. The boys graciously acquiesced to standing down this weekend, but the Las Vegas will be our last chance to prepare for the International Championship in Atlanta and we have a far stronger robot and team.

FIRST Arizona 2007

2007-03-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

March 5, 2007 - Carl Hayden High School

Although it’s been seven months since we have sent out an “update”, we have been busy. http://falconrobotics.blogspot.com/ The kids on the robotics team coached almost a dozen elementary and junior high school Lego Robotics teams and hosted the Arizona FIRST Lego Robotics Competition in December. Seventy teams and even the Governor attended. They also held a VEX robotics competition for high schools in the state. Promoting science, technology and engineering activities – that’s what they do.

This year’s FIRST Robotics competition was unveiled January 6^th. We had six weeks to build this year’s robot for the Rack and Roll game. We won’t see our robot “Little Jerry: until this Thursday, Practice and Inspection day, at the Veteran’s Coliseum in Phoenix Arizona. Friday and Saturday, March 9^th and 10^th, we compete with 33 other high school teams in the state’s biggest, most exciting display of teenage determination, innovation, and positive gracious professionalism/ http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedfiles/community/frc/events/2007_AZ_Agenda.pdf

This year we have made an organized effort to invite lawmakers to attend. Over a dozen legislators are expected to show up this week to see what all the excitement is about. The Falcons have learned how to apply their civics lessons into civic action. That’s what I love about the Robotics Club: It’s real, applied education that is really having a profound effect, not only on the students, but on our culture.

While we hope to do very well in the competition, but the real recognition the kids seek is the Chairman’s Award:

“FIRST’s most prestigious award, it honors the team judged to have created the best partnership effort among team participants, and to have best exemplified the true meaning of FIRST. The award helps keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the goal of inspiring greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology.”

Part of the submission process is a 10,000 character paper describing the robotics program’s impact on students and culture. The submission can be read at:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=50067&pagecat=291

I’m really proud to be a part of their lives. They really get “the big picture”. Here are young people who are libel “disadvantaged” teaching the rest of us how rich they are and trying to spur the educational system to support extracurricular academic activities on par with the extracurricular entertainment activities.

After the Arizona competition, thanks to financial support from the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, Honeywell, Intel, Wells Fargo, Phelps Dodge and a dozen small community businesses, we will also be competing at:

March 22-24: San Diego
March 29-31: Las Vegas
April 12-14: Atlanta (Championship)

The San Diego date will be unusual. Since girls seem to shy away (or is it pushed away?) from the physical building of the robot, this year we will be taking just the female roboteers to the California event. Fredi and I will just be “bumps on a log” while Karen, our physicist mentor, and my wife assume the adult leadership.

All of these events are free to the public and we would love to meet our supporters, if you are I the area on those dates.

For all those who rooted for the four boys in Wired Magazine “La Vida Robot”:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot_pr.html

Oscar is a junior at ASU studying mechanical engineering (also president and wheeler-dealer for the university’s underwater ROV team); Luis is becoming a Cordon Bleu chef at Scottsdale Culinary Arts school; Cristian is a freshman at ASU’s engineering college; and Lorenzo is a freshman at Phoenix Community College.

Over the next few weeks, we will try to send updates on this year’s competitions and some of the stories about some of the kids.

Phoenix – March 9, 2007, 3:45 a.m.

The Falcon Robotics team spent yesterday at the Coliseum tweaking our robot, Jerry, going through the inspection process and getting in a few practice matches. We are ready.

This year, the team members wrote emails and letters to every one of our state and federal legislators inviting them to attend the competition. We really believe that the FIRST engineering competitions are so important that decision makers need to see what can be done to improve the technical competency of our culture.

Our favorite city councilman and long time booster, showed up at 10 am. He is leaving for Washington and could only come on Thursday. Just as we shake hands, my cell phone rings. It’s the local ABC station and they want to do an early morning live remote.

Marina is a senior and on the Chairman’s subcommittee (she was one of the writers for our submission: http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=50067&pagecat=291) She took over escorting Councilman Simplot, touring the pit area and introducing him to other teams and officials and watching a practice match. By the time I was finished running around, it was time for Tom to leave. I apologized for ditching him like that, but he had a better time with knowledgeable Marina than he would have had with me. You know, it is true. Marina is a very intelligent, personable young lady. She just recently decided to switch her college plans from sociology to engineering because she enjoys the projects so much and the future employment prospects seem much better. She may still become a social worker, but with an engineering background. Exposing young people to the creative, fun, time consuming side of science, math and engineering really opens their eyes!

I’ll add to this later. Fredi Lajvardi, Marina, Daniel, Cynthia, Will, Adam, Yvette, Marcos and Pablo have to be on the field at 5 a.m. for the TV crew. The rest of our team arrives at 8 and then the competitions begin.

Same day – 8:00 p.m.

What a day! We won four matches, lost one and tied one! We are in third place. We will play two more matches tomorrow morning and then the quarter finals – semi finals and AZ championship rounds will be placed.

At the last minute, the NASA web site webcast the Phoenix games live. They will be live Saturday also:

http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/webcasts/regionals_2007.php

Scroll down to Phoenix

Daniel (our club president and junior), Angelica (VP and senior) and Cynthia (senior) gave our Chairman’s award to the judges today. They felt they did very well (no observers allowed) and I know they did their best. They have been practicing almost non stop for the last two weeks.

We were visited by a few state legislators and several TV stations. Daniel looks into the camera and can roll out a sound bite with the best of them. So can Angelica, but she can carry the message in Spanish. They kids are becoming real PR pros. They are so natural and well spoken, it even impresses me. These are the same kids, who a few months ago, would have done anything to avoid public speaking.

We have had a few minor problems with the robot, but a few minutes in the pit is all it takes to get it ready for the next match. Our robot is named Jerry in honor of our mentor Jerry Little who, with his wife, Karen, woks with us on Mondays. If you see the NASA video, Jerry is also the adult competition coach on the field. Anyway, when the announcers introduce the team at the beginning of the match, our kids in the stands start chanting “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry…” and, of course everyone else thinks they are cheering the robot. They are cheering Jerry the man. The kids really love the guy. One of the greatest strengths of the FIRST robotics program is mixing caring, intelligent, professional adults with students. They don’t “teach”; they work with them. They become the role models that most kids never really see or experience.

We are hoping for the best tomorrow.

Phoenix - March 10, 2007

They did it! Once again, the kids were awarded the Arizona FIRST Chairman Award. This means we will be in the running for the National Chairman award in Atlanta in April.

Our robot won the two matches in this morning’s seeding matches and we were ranked third which meant we had third pick for our ally in the championship rounds. We picked the team from Buena Vista High School in Sierra Vista, AZ. We helped them a bit last year when they first started. After all the other teams picked, we were able to select the third team that would form our alliance.

Long story short: we won our quarter finals and our semi finals and we lasted until a tie-breaker round in the final match and when came up short. Our alliance came in second over all, which is higher than we have ever ended in a FIRST competition. The kids were a little disappointed, but not too much. When we were announced as the Chairman’s winner, there were quite a few tears of joy being shed.

A neat memory from this weekend:

Yesterday afternoon, during matches, I was sitting in the stands where our team and some of their family members were watching the matches. In came a group of kids wearing tank top undershirts and looking kind of unkempt. I’m thinking that maybe I should have announced at school that there is a “dress code” at the competition. Then I recognized that the kids were the Carl Hayden cross county team. They ran the five miles from school, sat and watched a couple of matches, including one of ours, then trotted off to return to campus! Ahh, that’s evidence of “changing the culture.”

Monday, Fredi and I and some of the kids will be at Arizona State University as keynote speakers for the Microcomputer in Education Conference. http://mec.asu.edu/2007/keynotes.htm

While on spring break, the girls on our team are preparing for the San Diego FIRST regional. Angelica asked if we would have time to stop at the beach. She has never seen the ocean. A lot of the girls haven’t seen the ocean. There will be time.

Once again, thank you everyone.

Allan

2006 ROV Competiton -- Houston

2006-06-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday Morning, June 22, 2006 -- 35,000 feet above New Mexico

The Carl Hayden Robotics team is on our way to the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas for the 5th annual MATE Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) competition. This is our third year in the university division. In 2004, the kids beat everyone and earned the 1st place trophy. Last year we placed third. Hopefully, the kids will do as well in the competition as they have been doing in practice.

Of the 50 or so students who are in the Robotics Club, we are only taking six with us. The MATE competitions only allow 6 team members to operate, demonstrate and represent the team. We are taking two ROVs, Ipski-Pipski and Otis. On this trip or roster is:
Annalisa – outgoing club president and Ipski’s co-driver. She has just graduated and will be attending Arizona State University (ASU) in the fall- Business & technology major. She has kept us organized and on task for the last two years.

Pablo – is a junior and is Ipski-Pipski’s driver. Pablo is beginning his third year in the club and has become the “guy who gets things done, no mater what”. Summer vacation began three weeks ago, yet Pablo has been at school every day (except Sundays) working on the ROV. He’s very quite but has more frequently shows an outgoing charm when he is in public.

Daniel – a junior and our new president. Daniel is a “hard charger” academically. He is taking college courses while in high school and is certainly college bound. Daniel is Otis’s codriver.

Cristian – of “La Vida Robot” fame is Otis’s driver. Like Annalisa, he has graduated and will be off to ASU in the fall in the Ira Fulton College of Engineering. His self-assured, quite intellect has been a tremendous asset to our team and he has been an inspiration to younger students.

Lorenzo – also of “La Vida Robot” notoriety is also moving on to college. Readers of Wired magazine sent in contributions and all the four kids in that story will be in college. Lorenzo will start out at the local community college. Lorenzo will be manning Otis’s tether. While in the water, the ROV is connected to the surface with a 100 foot collection of umbilical cords. It’s Lorenzo job to let out and bring in the cable as the ROV operates 40 feet below the surface.

Adam – a senior. Adam is new to our team. We were in desperate need of a programmer and Adam has taken two ears of programming at Carl Hayden and he was willing to commit to the hundreds and hundreds of hours it takes to complete one of these projects. During competition, he is Ipski’s tether man.

Fredi and myself are the main teacher/sponsors. We also have my wife and math teacher Debbie as female chaperone. Jim is a fellow Carl Hayden teacher and also Daniel’s dad. Jim will be doing a lot of our videotaping. Out two fantastic mentors will fly in early tomorrow, Karen and Jerry. Karen, a physicist, and her architect husband, Jerry, adopted our team two years ago and have been fantastic working and inspiring the kids. One of the reasons that we can compete successfully with universities is because our kids are exposed to top talent in the engineering community.

Tomorrow morning we will go to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the Johnson Space Center. It’s a huge in door crystal clear 40-foot deep pool as large as a football field. Underwater they have mockups of spacecraft and space station modules where EVA-suited astronauts practice tasks while “Floating in space”. We will get to test our ROVs in the pool and go through technical inspection and we should be ready for Saturday’s event.

Saturday the kids will do a presentation about our ROV and its mission to a panel of judges. Later in the day, they will put our ROV’s in the water for the half hour mission. We also will put up a poster display that will be judged. All the teams will complete their missions by Sunday noon and the winners are announced Sunday evening.

All in all, we are all excited and anxious to do our best against the top colleges and universities. It just all seems so amazing that a high school in the “hood” is in this level of competition!

Friday Evening, June 23, 2006 – Houston, Texas

This morning we went to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at the Johnson Space Center. Within the large building is a huge crystal clear 40 foot deep pool of water. We will be competing tomorrow amid full size space station modules. It’s such a chilling feeling to be amid all of the high tech props that the astronauts work with.
This year’s mission requires picking up a “probe” (really a 10 inch ling PVC pipe) that has a long rope attached to it. We have to string it through 4 waypoints and end up at a structure on the floor of the pool. We also have to bring a box from the surface down to this structure and insert it into the cabinet on the floor. Then we insert the probe into the side of the box. There is another probe on the floor that we have to pick up and insert in the pool.

We decided a few months ago, to build two ROVs to accomplish the mission. Otis is responsible for bringing the box down and inserting in the cabinet and opening a door on the side.

At the same time, “Ipski-Pipski” is responsible for retrieving the probe, stringing the rope through the 4 way points and inserting the probes in the cabinet. The six operators have been practicing in a 10 foot deep pool in Phoenix. Today we got to practice in the 40 foot NBL pool. We discovered two problems with Otis at the greater depth and pressure. Our big ROV sank too fast, but that was easily fixed by adding more buoyant material to it.
(Videos of our practice at Phoenix:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=42960&pagecat=207 )
Otis has three cameras so Daniel and Annalisa can see what they are doing under the surface. One of the camera housings developed a small leak which shorted out the camera. Late this afternoon, we bought a replacement camera at Frys and new PVC parts for the housing at Home Depot. Cristian will be up an extra hour or two tonight fabricating the replacement. All-in-all we feel we are in great shape for tomorrow’s competition. We have a chance of completing all the tasks well under the allotted 30 minute time limit.

Last year we met Dayna Steele and her husband Charlie Justiz. Once again they invited us to their home for pizza and a swim and to introduce us to a few of their relatives and friends, including astronauts!! We all now have autographed pictures of Pamela Melroy (“We call her Pam) who is has been to space twice and will be the commander of an upcoming flight (STS-120). Imagine, Carl Hayden High School students talking technology with astronauts over pizza and soft drinks.

Dayna and Charlie and friends are fantastic people. The whole point of our robotics program is not to build machines; not even to educate students, but rather to change our culture. We want the kids exposed to people who are smart, exciting, moral and interesting. People who have educated themselves and enjoy their work. Our kids now have role models who truly care for them. Most kids, when immersed in a culture that appreciates and encourages education, aspire to do the same. Once they want to learn and see what they are capable of, there’s no holding them back.

It’s late Friday and the kids are practicing their oral presentation. They are impressive. Tomorrow morning the six students will do their oral presentation in front of the judges and the ROVs will perform in water in the afternoon. Results and awards will be Sunday night. Wish us luck!

Saturday, June 24, 2006, 1pm

This morning the team presented our ROV program to a panel of three judges. The six members spent 15 minutes with their presentation and another 15 in a Q & A session. Only two teacher/adults were allowed in the room with them. In previous years, we deliberately did not have any of our adults attend because we felt our presence would be of no help and possible add tension in the room. Besides, we are confident in the students’ preparation.

This year, however, Fredi and Karen monitored the presentation/interview. Last year a judge was especially harsh on one of the kids, asking Cindy, our newest member, what the two wavelengths of the laser light in the fiber optics were. Cindy is a fantastic, intelligent woman, but she is not our “science officer”. She explained how two different colors were used, one for two-way data transfer and the other signal for 2 video signals. He would not let Cristian answer and really pressed Cindy to admit she did not know. I doubt there were very few university students who could have answered the question. The rules stated that every member should have a general understanding of the principle involved, but very technical questions could be answered by the team expert. We wanted to witness this year’s session to see if something like that happened again.

It was a very fair interview. The judges asked probing questions to see the depth of the kid’s knowledge, but they did it in a very professional manner. All-in-all, Fredi, Karen and the kids felt they did well, but they were not perfect. There is a possible 70 points for the interview that goes toward the total competition score.

In two hours, we will perform the underwater missions. That is worth 170 points and there are bonus points possible for early completion. We replaced our faulty camera, however, it has not been tested in the water. If it fails to work when it goes to the bottom, Otis should still be able to complete his tasks with the renaining two on board. We are all trying to look calm, but I can tell all of us are feeling the little scary whine that starts building before a major performance. This is when the kids practice and training will take over.

11 pm

What a great day. 10 of the 16 “Explorer teams ran their missions this afternoon. Six of them did not earn any points. Their ROV’s simply sank to the bottom and were dead in the water. Two teams completed the entire missions and we were one of them!
The team that performed ahead of us, a university from eastern Canada, did all the tasks and received the 170 points. They finished with 15 minutes remaining so they also have a 15 point bonus. That meant that we would have to finish all the tasks within 15 minutes if we wanted the forst place rank.

As the timer began, Otis descended with the module that had to be inserted into the cabinet. Daniel and Cristian guided the ROV into the target area and quickly completed their first assignment. They then opened the door in record time.
At the same time, Pablo and Annalisa were having trouble getting Ipski-Pipski to pick up the first probe. They kept pushing it out of their reach. At last they finally had it in their grasp and started to weave the attached rope through the waypoints. It was taking a little longer than we would like, but they were ahead of the Canadian teams split time. They seemed to be having trouble rising above obstacles.

After passing the last waypoint, they went to insert the first probe in the module. Only 11 minutes had elapsed and we knew it was possible to complete inserting the last two probes in just a few minutes. This was shaping up into a great race.
Ipski seemed to be fumbling and wasting time. Seconds passed – a half minute then a whole minute, then two and still the probe was in the ROV’s claw. Then the kids started to pull the ROV to the surface by pulling the tether. Our hearts sank. Pulling on the tether is a five point penalty and it meant something was wrong. We watched as they retrieved Ipski and placed him on the deck.

The kids started to cut and move things around and we saw they were adding some buoyant floats. We could not think of any reason why they would be adding buoyancy. After a few minutes of M.A.S.H.-like operating, Ipski was put back in the water and descending to pick up the probes by the cabinets. It only took them 3 minutes to complete the last tasks of the mission and the two ROVs returned to the surface. They completed all the tasks in 26.8 minutes.

Our final score for the ROV performance is 170(perfect) – 5 (penalty for raising ROV by tether pulling) + 3.2 bonus for finishing early = Total 168.2!!
When we returned to the pits we saw what the problem was: Our “turkey pan” case that held the electronics had crushed in the four corners, thus we lost some of our volume and the ROV lost some of its flotation and could not rise above the bottom of the pool under its own power.

The kids had wisely brought it up, added flotation to compensate for the lost volume and completed the tasks. Their cool-headiness and decisive actions saved the day! In all the MATE ROV competitions, no one had completed all tasks, until today.

This evening we drove to Galveston and ate seafood. We told the waiter that it was Annalisa’s birthday and they made a big (and embarrassing) deal about it. She had to dance around Joe’s Crab Shack with two cones on her mouth like a seagull beak while the crowd sang the traditional Happy Birthday song.

Afterwards we walked around the historic town. It came so close to being hit by a huge hurricane last year that we all thought how fragile this community is. Surely some day a huge storm will once again wash over these cobblestone streets.

Tomorrow we will go watch the rest of the competition, including Arizona State University and Chandler High School from AZ.

Fredi is posting today’s pictures at: http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=42960&pagecat=209

Sunday morning

The last of the underwater competitions are over. The results of the mission tasks are:
Team # School/Team Name Mission Score
15 Arizona State University 0
10 CATE Center -10
6 Carl Hayden Community High School 168.52
5 Clatsop Community College 130
16 Franklin W.Olin College of Engineering 0
14 Long Beach City College 65
4 Marine Institute of Memorial University 185.05
2 MIT 0
8 Missouri Sate University 0
9 Monterey Peninsula College 70
3 Palm Beach Lakes High School 20
7 Pasadena Memorial 0
11 UC Davis -15
12 University of Waterloo DQ
1 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee -5

This evening, at the banquet, the technical writing, presentation and poster scores will be disclosed and the total scores. It looks like we are the strongest team for second place. We’ll see in a few hours.

It's amazing to see how many teams wound up with 0 or negative points. The water pressure sure takes its toll. I guess we could boast that we beat MIT again for the third time, but our ROV almost crushed and sank alongside the collegiate ROV debris..
The most rewarding part of the competition was to watch our students diagnose the problem when Ipski almost was crushed, quickly come to a consensus on a possible solution, haul the ROV up, add buoyancy, place it back in the water and continue the mission. All the while the clock it ticking and there is no room for error. They never gave up and pulled a successful mission out of a near disaster. They were a professional engineering team!

Sunday evening

It’s one of those bittersweet nights.
We won the second place overall trophy and we were very happy about it. In the last three years we have placed first, third and now second. We are very proud of our record. It’s not often a high school can consistently rank that high in a university competition.

The downer part of the evening, was when they announced that next year’s competition will be in Canada. While we would all love to visit Newfoundland, Carl Hayden High School is predominantly Hispanic and many of the students at school are undocumented. Neither Fredi nor I want to have to investigate student’s legal status or risk leaving the country with children who may have trouble re entering the U.S. As a result, we will not be competing next year in the MATE ROV competition.
SO this year season ends.

Annalisa will spend a few weeks in Atlanta as an intern video producer and then return to Phoenix to begin her engineering/business career at Arizona State University.

Lorenzo will be working at a local scuba shop this summer and then begins classes at Phoenix Community College.

Cristian has a new laptop computer and he is always using it: games, internet and Visual BASIC programming. He begins his engineering education at Arizona State University.

Pablo, Daniel and Adam will return to Carl Hayden in two months and they will be the new leadership along with Airreal, Angelica, Marco, Victor, Eric and a dozen others to begin another school year.

Thanks for all the kind words. We’ll be back soon.

Monday evening June 26, 2006 --Phoenix

We spent this morning in our Houston hotel. Actually, Daniel and Adam did not wake up until after noon!

We received emails and phone calls from some local Phoenix news media and a couple of Spanish language papers.

At least two national outlets have contacted us.

You guys are sure sending these emails around!!!

Craig, our school district public relations guru wrote a press release and I’ve attached it to this email.

When there is going to be national news exposure, I’ll tip you off.

Today was also Annalisa’s 18th birthday and we celebrated all day. She wore a pink crown even when we eat a Luther’s BBQ.

Most of us arrived safely home this evening. The exception is Fredi who is somewhere in west Texas on U.S.10 driving the ROV’s and equipment home. He’s the most amazing guy. All of the robotic activity is above and beyond his regular teaching duties. He does not even get any extra pay for any of it. When asked why he does it, he replies, “It’s the most effective teaching I’ve ever done”. What a professional. I’m lucky to be working with him.

There are some wise companies that have sponsored our activities: Intel, Honeywell, Wells-Fargo, Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. Their community investment programs make this all possible.

One local home builder, Ira A. Fulton, attended one of our presentations. He asked how much it cost to go to Houston. We replied that with airfare, hotels, meals and parts it was close to $10,000. He said, “Ill pay for that.” He did and it sure helped.

Our mentors, Karen and Jerry and Marcos have been such a positive influence on the kids. They change lives. I realize they have changed mine also. What an inspiration they are.

Several small businesses in the neighborhood have opened their parts and raw material supplies “for the neighborhood’s robotics team”. You see their names on the front of our team T-shirts.

There have been so many companies, engineers, technicians, and other professionals that we call on when we are stuck who will teach us on the spot what we need to know to solve a problem. Many have become friends. We may be a high school, but we have access to the best minds in the country.

The kids’ parents and families have been fantastic. We keep their kids for many hours after school which mean missed dinners, strange pick up and drop off times and all the adjustments families make to accommodate our weird schedules.

Our school principal, Steve Ybarra, and our staff have put up with all our antics. That’s a risky proposition for a well-ordered school. They took the risk and I hope all the messes we made and all the late passes we wrote were worth it.

Our school district, from the school board, superintendent to the last hired clerk have encouraged us and have seen that our forgotten or last minute paperwork is completed.

“it takes a village…” Nah, it takes many more people than a simple village!

And of course there are the hundreds of people who have sent us emails, letters, and have met us in person. You guys have been fantastic. It’s not unusual to see a wet eye in the room when we read a bunch of your emails.

I’m tired and I’m going to sleep tonight!

Thanks,

Allan

FIRST Nationals 2006 Saturday Final

2006-04-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Atlanta 2006, Final results

Our hotel is about a mile and a half from the Georgia Dome. The morning walk up and over a hill and the early day’s chill gets the heart pumping- as if we needed more stimulation.

Our spotting crew had a lot of intelligence on our opponents and we were teamed with mediocre allies for our first match, but we had all night to plot a strategy for our toughest game. Karen, Luis and the spotting crew told Jerry, Pablo, Marco and Jorge how they should attempt to score and defend. It was the most exciting match we played. However, we lost 19 – 17. It was a real cliffhanger. Even though Pablo piloted the robot around the field and held two of the highest scoring robots to 19 points was exciting, realizing how much of an advantage the “intelligence team” gave us made this almost victory a real team effort.

We lost our final match and our record was 3 wins, 3 losses and 1 tie. We were hoping to have a winning record, but at least we did not have a losing one.

There was a little disappointment, but it was short lived as championship matches played out. We knew we did not have a robot of the caliber of some of those in the final matches. As we all sat in the stands, the kids were coming up with ideas to make a better robot next year!

We waited patiently for the end of the games when they would announce the big award, the Chairman’s Award. Award after award was announced and then the final presentation. We were all SO EXCITED! They said there were three runner ups and in team numerical order they were 365, 503, 842. Team 842 is us. The kids were shocked. We really thought we would win the top award. Team 111 was the winner and as they read their accomplishments, it was apparent that the team had been doing great things for many years. With only five years of seniority, we are still newcomers to the FIRST league. Elizabeth spoke for all of us when she said, “I felt like the world came crushing down on us, smothering our hopes and dreams. I felt especially bad for the seniors.”

(All results can be found at: http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/Events/EINSTEIN/awards.html )

The kids worked all year for the Chairman’s Award and they were disappointed. The trudge back over the hill to the hotel with our equipment was actually therapeutic. There is a final party at the Olympic Centennial Park, and with some prodding we all went. After some exercise and some food, we were all in far better spirits and we were already proposing plans for nest year.

We will have to spread the message of FIRST which is to increase our society’s awareness of the role science and technology plays and how important it is to expose our young people to the rewarding careers available to them. We can’t do anything about the seniority of other teams, but we will do more to motivate our students and the young people we affect. The 2007 season has begun.

Sunday we went to the Atlanta Aquarium and we will have our “blow out” dinner at the Hard Rock Café in the evening. Our new friend Anita is taking us to her video production facilities Monday morning and then we will return to Phoenix in the evening.

When we return to school we will focus our efforts on our underwater ROV and get ready for the MATE underwater remotely operated vehicle challenge at Houston’s Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

Just like the kids we work with, we are a relatively young team maturing at an accelerating rate. We heal fast and we seem to thrive if we are kept active. And we have a lot of great people watching over us.

Thanks.

FIRST Nationals 2006 Friday

2006-04-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

We gulp down a cheap breakfast and go to the Georgia Dome as soon as it opens to get good seats and to make sure the robot’s batteries charged during the night. Opening ceremonies conclude and the games begin.

We won our first match! Four more to go today and two on Saturday morning.

All the while, thousands of people are wandering around the pit areas and the kids are handing out buttons and smiles and conversing with everyone. There are kids here from all around the U.S. and many from Canada, Israel, Brazil, France… It’s a real education. The Falcons are meeting a lot of new friends.

One lady, Anita, who we knew from email messages, came by to see us. What a treat. She has her own video production company and wanted to meet all the kids and see what FIRST was all about. I think she had a great time. We enjoyed her company.

Well, one of Anita’s clients is the Hooter’s restaurant chain. (See the Wired article or the Reader’s Digest Article for the connection). She and her husband treated all of us to dinner. She even had Cristian and Lorenzo sign their magazine article and it may soon be on the wall of the Las Vegas Hooter’s. Lorenzo has finally received his wish and we have met a new friend!

Anyway, we lost our second game 75 to 72 and the kids were a little disappointed, but then again, we really didn’t think our robot would do real well at the national level. We came to win the Chairman’s Award.

We tied the third gam3 and won the last two of the day. We have a 3-1-1 record and are currently ranked 17 out of 86. We are doing very well indeed.

Annalisa, Luis and Daniel went to the interview room for their Chairman’s presentation and interview. They feel they did very well. We’ll see tomorrow.

This has been the year of the new kids. They are really “hauling their weight”. Jorge has become the tool man. He knows where everything is and keeps the pit area ship shape. He is always lending tools to other teams (“Gracious Professionalism”) and he always gets them back. He’s a godsend.

Our mentor Karen and senior Luis are in charge of scouting all the other robot teams. Five other girls on our team sit in the stands compiling reports on every match. How any points each robot scores in autonomous mode, how effective they are on defense, etc. They Have been very diligent and their “intelligence” is making a difference. I think that is why we have been doing so well as the games go on. We know how the opposition will act. We have never been so organized!

Fredi is posting pictures and they can be found at:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=43588&pagecat=193

Tomorrow morning we play our last two seeding games and then we will find out if we are in the division quarter finals. We know we have some tough opposition in the morning, but we are contenders.

Late in the afternoon the final and most prestigious award will be presented. We are contenders for that one too.

FIRST Nationals 2006 Day 1

2006-04-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 27, 2006 – Atlanta, GA

Yesterday sixteen students and four teachers left Carl Hayden High School and flew to Atlanta for the FIRST international robotics championship.

Today we went to the convention center and Georgia Dome and uncrated “Karen”, our robot who we have not seen since the regional competition in Arizona last month. Our ‘bot survived the shipping and storage, although her batteries were not charged. We were also joined by our mentors, Jerry and Karen (the robot’s namesake). Their batteries WERE charged!

We passed inspection and we participated in three practice rounds which went very well. Our robot is designed to shoot balls in a goal 8 foot above the field, all by herself in the first 10 seconds of the game. We were nailing 4 balls in the goal which earns us 12 points. After that, the team gets to drive the robot for the remaining 2 minutes of game play. We feel the robot is living up to her potential.

While seniors Cristian, Lorenzo (of La Vida Robot fame) Annalisa, Luis and Juana “know the ropes”, the younger students, Pablo, Marco, Daniel, Jorge, Jesus, Marco, Cynthia, Angelica, Yvette, Rebecca, Airreal and Elizabeth have been phenomenal and are the “A team” crew. Since we felt we did not have a killer robot this year, we decided to give the younger team members experience.

Our main goal this year is to win the highest award, the Chairman’s Award. It is given to the team that has promoted math, science and engineering education and has changed the culture. With all the presentations we have given this year (50) and the publications we have been in and with all the positive TV coverage we have been fortunate to receive, well, we feel we are frontrunners. President Annalisa and Luis and Daniel will make a 15 minute presentation to the judges and we will visited by everyone in the pits tomorrow and Saturday. Awards are Saturday afternoon.

Friday and Saturday’s competitions are being televised over the NASA channel and also webcast on their web site. There are four divisions and we are in the Curie division. Watch for us.

In a few minutes the pizza we ordered will arrive and we’ll all be talking about what we hope to accomplish tomorrow. The kids really understand what they have done for our school and neighborhood. They have taken the image of an “underperforming” school which is now being considered to be a model for all schools to emulate.

Juana was commenting on how so many good things have been happening to her during the last year. She is looking forward to college next semester. She has a tuition scholarship for Arizona State University. She’s worked very hard and she’s extremely talented. It’s really an honor to be around these young adults. Good things have been happening to all of us!

We would not be here without our sponsors who have given so much:

Arthur M. Blank Foundation
Honeywell
Ira A. Fulton
Intel
Wells Fargo, Phelps-Dodge Corp.
Microchip
Sead
¡nventivity
ARRL
FastSigns
Southwest Fastner

And all the teachers, parents and friends that have given their support. It is really paying off.

… and to all the people who send us words of encouragement via emails and notes. We read them to the kids and it really means a lot.

Tomorrow will be something..

Reader's Digest

2006-04-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

We are in the May issue of Reader’s Digest.

Joshua Davis's "La Vida Robot" article in the April '05 Wired Magazine has been "condesnsed", re titled and published in the May 2006 Reader's Digest.

Reader's Digest is one of the most successful publishing stories in the history of global magazine publishing. It now appears in 48 editions in 19 languages (Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesia Bahasa, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Thai) with just under 100 million readers every month.

The electronic English version is at:
http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=26507&pageIndex=0

Politics & Publicity

2006-04-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

The Robot kids at Carl Hayden have been very busy. Our FIRST robot was shipped from the Arizona Regional Competition to Atlanta where the kids will see “Karen” again on day before the national competition, April 27-28. Although Karen the Robot has been gone, there is no slack time.

We are constructing our underwater robot for the 2006 MATE competition in June in Houston. It’s amazing how skilled and competent the seniors have become. Since beginning learning about underwater robots three years ago, they have become masters. They are on the phones daily talking to marine suppliers, picking the brains of engineers thousands of miles away and reading everything on the Internet.

The kids are now involved in politics. They helped a local congressman write a bill that would help with extra curricular science and technology projects in Arizona public schools. They testified in Arizona House committee hearings and their bill passed to the House with a 7-0 bipartisan vote. Annalisa, our president, now has a dozen legislators that asked her to keep them informed. We hoped we would increase students’ interest in Math, Science and Engineering, but we never dreamed the teens would become “players in politics”!

Over the last 12 months, the team has made over 45 presentations in Arizona and elsewhere. One such presentation was delivered at FermiLab in Illinois. Usually they pay for one speaker’s expenses, but they invited both Fredi and myself to speak. Although none of the kids went with us, Fredi and I filled in for them. FermiLab tapes their colloquiums and ours is now on their webpage. It is at http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/060315Cameron/index.htm

It takes about an hour to see the whole thing, but unlike the “real deal” presentation, you can fast forward pause and stop!

In the Rumor Department: It is not official and the whole thing my not even happen, but look for the “La Vida Robot” story in the May issue of Reader’s Digest. They claim they have almost 100 million readers. I told the kids, if it is published, they will be immortal because the Reader’s Digest issues stay in doctor’s offices FOREVER.

To all those who have sent emails of encouragement, we read them to the kids every Friday. This has all grown so big, yet they are still the nicest kids to work with. When we read emails like, “All of France is cheering for you”, or share some of the personal stories you have sent, it gets very quiet and brings home to them that it is a big world, but they have a big place in it. They are rising to challenge. Maybe its time to start a “Fix Global Warming Club.”

Thanks,

Allan

FIRST Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ Day 3

2006-03-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday March 11 2006. Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ

The kids won the top award: The Arizona Regional Chairman’s Award. We are all so excited. Winning one top award could be luck, but the kids have been earning top awrds for the last three years. They are not a fluke. They are the “real deal”.

This is the description of the Chariman’s Award:

“The Chairman’s Award was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition as our ultimate goal for transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encourage more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists.

The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and which embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST. It remains the most prestigious team award FIRST presents.

FIRST will present a Regional Chairman’s Award at each regional competition. There are thirty-three (33) regional competitions scheduled for the 2006 season, therefore, there will be thirty-three Regional Chairman’s Award winners. Only the winners of the Regional Chairman’s Award will be eligible for consideration in the selection of The Chairman’s Award presented at The Championship.”

The kids have really worked hard all year and they were absolute hyper-happy to be honored.

We celebrated with our buddies from Mexico and our new friends from Chinle and Sierra Vista. Afterwards we took the kids out for pizza. It’s so much fun to see the reaction and pride in the new team members. It’s all so much bigger than they ever imagined!

Our robot wound up ranked 26^th out of the 45 teams. We lost the last two competitions in the morning. We would have won the last match but because of a simple mental error we forgot to reconnect two wires that enabled our robot to fire the balls we carried, a potential 21 points. We lost the match by one point. Once again we learn the team that beats us the most is us.

Robot Karen was packed in her crate and we will see her in Atlanta for the championship April 27-29. We have our sights on the National Chairman’s Award. We made some adjustments to the robot before we tucked her in crate and we hope we worked all the bugs out.

The kids are now on a one week spring break. Fredi and I fly to FermiLabs in Illinois to speak to people who we really admire, but tonight, we sleep.

Thanks for all the encouragement.

FIRST Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ day 2

2006-03-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

Friday March 10 2006. Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ

We lost our first games. Invariably, the balls would stick in our new ball holding tube or some other modification that we made would not work quite right. By noon we felt we really did not have a chance to perform well, Finally the last “fixit” worked and we won the rest of our matches. By the end of the day we are ranked 16^th and there will be two more games Saturday morning. We may wind up playing in the quarter final matches Saturday afternoon. We’ll see.

A reporter from the Arizona Republic spent a lot of time with us. It’s exciting to see people “get it”.

This is not a robot contest. This is a convention of the most excited kids who have worked very hard to meet impossible deadlines and are now going public for the world to see what they have done. These are the people who will invent, discover, build and solve. While the media (well, I guess it’s all of us) has been obsessed with the lives and accomplishments of our sports and entertainment we haven’t noticed that we are losing our pool of engineers, scientists, researchers and innovators who have given us the standard of living that we take for granted.

Anyway, Connie the reporter even got to go into the judges room while our kids gave their presentation for the Chairman’s Award. They usually only allow the three student presenters and the judges in the room. The kids had a few minutes to make a presentation on how our team has affected our community. After all the publicity and all the presentations we have given and all the work the kids have done in neighborhood schools, the kids have a strong case on why we should be a model for other schools. Inagine: Carl Hayden High School that was labled “underperforming” just two years ago being considered as a “best practice”! The kids have accomplished a lot, but more importantly, their attitudes have changed. We will see if we won at Saturday’s award ceremony.

Annalisa, our president, has been fantastic. She along with Luis and Daniel, were our Chairman’s Award presenters. She also arraigned our lunches. Her parents arrive about 11 am and we have a tailgate party in the parking lot. The best part about it is that we also have included our good friends from Mexico’s team and our new friends from Chinle, AZ and Sierra Vista, AZ. At the end of this school year, Arizona State university is getting a first rate Chief Executive. Annalisa has earned scholarships that will pay for her tuition and her room and board thanks to the Maecenas Fund. www.MaecenasFund.org

I’m told that the competition was webcast, but not broadcast on the NASA TV channel, but Saturday it will be on TV. If you watch, look for team 842. Our strategy is to shoot for the center goal in the first ten second autonomous period and then play defense to minimize our opponents score. We should be the “linebacker” on the field. At the end of the game we should be atop the ramp for bonus points.

Also watch for the cheerleaders. We had the full squad there Friday and a lot of them will return for Saturday. They were awesome. Usually they attend event to cheer for a sports team. With us, they are on the team.

It’s 3 am Arizona time and it’s raining. We haven’t had rain in months. It’s been the longest dry spell since records have been kept. The dry spell is over. That’s a good sign.

FIRST Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ day 1

2006-03-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

Thursday March 9 2006. Veterans Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ

Today is practice and inspection day. Tomorrow competition begins.

We unpacked “Karen” our FIRST robot. She had to be packed and shipped by February 21st. We spent twelve hours repairing and modifying our shooting robot. We had a basket on the top of her to hold the nerf balls that we shoot, but the balls kept jamming. We have replaced the basket with a tube that curves up and forward. Karen now looks like a scorpion.

Pablo is a sophomore, but he has been on the team since his first day of school last year. He worked hard to be chosen as the robot driver this year and he is doing a fantastic job. He has the skills of the “Gameboy generation” and discipline to listen to Cristian, the “coach” on the driving team. We are allowed four players: Driver (Pablo), codriver (Marcos), Human Player(Luis) and coach (Cristian). They have only had a little practice, but they seem to be doing fine.

Our girls VEX robot team, the VEXens, set up a field with their robots. Even though today was not a “demo day”. They attracted a lot of attention. Our young ladies have come a long way. A few months ago, none of them had ever held a power tool and today they are showing people how they made everything and letting people try driving their ‘bots. I imagine there will be a VEX competition alongside the FIRST regional next year.

Well, the robots ready, the kids are ready and the opening ceremonies are at 9am tomorrow. I’ve been told the games “The event will also be broadcast on the NASA channel. Here is a link to that information. Please click on the Arizona event.
http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/webcasts/regionals_2006.php”

Look for us, team 842. We will probably be the only school with cheerleaders!

2006-03-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

We havn’t sent out a Carl Hayden Robotics Club update in a long time (June?). We have been very busy though doing presentations and such, but now it’s time to send out our “updates”.

It is competition time for the Carl Hayden Robotics team. Our schedule is:

March 9-11, FIRST Robotics, Arizona Regional, Phoenix AZ http://www.usfirst.org/frc/map/index.lasso?page=areasearch&area=AZ-USA

April 27-29, FIRST Robotics, National Championship, Atlanta GA

June 23-24, MATE ROV, National Championship, Houston TX
http://www.marinetech.org/rov_competition/index.php

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is now an international event. http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/ This year’s game was announced January 7th. A thousand high schools began designing, building, and testing their robot and they had to be shipped by February 21st. We will next see “Karen”, our robot, at the Coliseum in Phoenix for our regional competition.

The Arizona regional, one of 40 regional competitions, will be attended by 50 high school teams. Twenty teams are form AZ, the remainder from around the U.S., Canada, and our “adopted” team from Mexico City.

While we hope we do well in the robotics competition, our sights are set on the Chairman’s Award. It is the highest award for the team that best exemplifies the sprit of FIRST and is help up as a role model. We won the award in Arizona last year and come in second best in the Atlanta Nationals.

We will keep you posted on our competition

WIRED’s La Vida Robot http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html brought a lot of public attention to the kids and their accomplishments in science and technology. The four students in the article are doing very well:

Oscar is a sophomore at ASU majoring in mechanical engineering. He started ASU’s ROV team and will be competing with ASU at the Houston competition!

Luis is at the Scottsdale Culinary Arts school and will be a Cordon Blue Chef and will have a degree in restaurant management.

Cristian and Lorenzo are Hayden seniors. Cristian will be going into the Ira Fulton School of Engineering at ASU and Lorenzo will be going to the local community college.

All four have “full ride” scholarships and very bright futures. The best news, is that these opportunities are not limited to the “La Vida Four”.

A businessman from Oregon heard about the kids and wanted to help. He started the Maecenas Fund to support hard working, aspiring students like ours to succeed in college. The Maecenas fund is going to provide support to four of our students. www.MaecenasFund.org

ASU inaugurated a new scholarship for high school students who have been in academic competitions like FIRST and the MATE ROV event. One of our students (Oscar) received that award.

Basically, every senior in the robotics club for the last three years has gone on to college or the military, most with scholarships. Their success is having a profound effect on many of the other kids at school who never thought they had a chance at a middle class American life.

During the next few months, we will email updates on the team and some of the individual students. If you do not wish to receive these notes, just let me know. A lot of last year’s reports are at: http://falconrobotics.blogspot.com/

Further information on just about all the stuff we do can be found at: http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/club/club.php?sectiondetailid=27681&sc_id=1128473844

Why do we have a Blog?

2005-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

Whenever the Falcon Robotics team left Phoenix for an "away" competition, we would send a daily email report to parents and the people who donated to our team. The list of people we email has grown to over 500 people.

Also, I am a teacher of computer science at our hogh school and I think I will have my students create blogs. Nothing improves writing like really writing.

So for many reasons, I am going to start this blog to keep a record of our adventures this year.

Houston Day 4 National ROV competition Results

2005-06-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we placed third. A combination team of high school and college students from Newfoundland won first place. They really did do a good job in the competition and they deserved to win.

Monterey Peninsula College came in second place. Although we were higher in the performace score, they wrote a better technical report.

The kids are in a good mood and we feel we did well considering that we did not do as well as we were capable of doing.

A year ago, on the drive home, Lorenzo would burst out with "We beat MIT!" After this year’s contest I looked over at Lorenzo and I said, “Well, we can still say ‘We beat MIT!’" Lorenzo thought for a second and replied, “Yeah, but there’s one college in California and all Canada shouting, “We beat Carl Hayden! Dr. C, we were the team to beat. That’s really something.”

Thanks for all you support. We will now go on vacation for a while. School and the engineering cycle will start again at the beginning of August.

Thanks,

Allan

Houston Day 4 National ROV competition

2005-06-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

All the underwater competitions are finished and we are currently in 2nd place.

The first place team is a collection of high school and university students from Newfoundland, Canada. Their performance score is 65, ours is 52.

Monterey Bay College, CA is in third place with a score (we think) 40 points.

Here is how the rest of the scoring will go:

Each team sent in their technical report three weeks ago – a possible 25 points
Each team had to make a technical presentation – a possible 80 points.
Each team had to produce a poster display – a possible 15 points.

The underwater performance was worth up to 120 points. So our 52 points did not look too good yesterday, especially since we felt we very easily could have earned 100 points. We expected some one[-67 to do well!

The first, second and third overall teams are determined by the total points in all four categories. We will find out tonight at the awards ceremony who won.

A few observations:

A few people have congratulated us on the Wired article and the Newsline program, but most people, especially us, are not making a fuss about it. The kids were worried about it getting in the way.

I’m amazed how well the kids can work with only 4-6 hours of sleep a night. I bet when we get home, they will sleep for 24 hours straight.

MIT used fiber optics with an onboard battery like we do, but theirs was too fragile and was easily tangled. They became another ROV DNF (Did Not Finish)

In our FIRST robot competitions and the MATE competitions, we try to build robust, reliable machines. We don’t always reach that goal, but once again I’m surprised how often it pays off for us.

Houston is humid

A few minutes past midnight, all the kids came in our room to wish us a happy Father’s Day.

It’s time for a nap and then some serious pacing.

Fredi has posted new pictures at:
http://www.freewebs.com/matehouston/photosfromhouston.htm

I know he keeps changing sites, but we either keep exceeding size or traffic limits on the other sites.

Allan

Houston Day 3 National ROV competition

2005-06-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the ROV competition. The technical papers have been scored, the poster displays have been scored and the oral technical presentations have been scored. We have no idea what those scores are. We find out at tomorrow’s award ceremony.

The underwater robots, however, perform in view of everyone and we learn these scores as teams compete.

Two categories,: Ranger which is mostly high school teams that have survived regional competitions (and one middle school) and the Explorer class of mostly universities, colleges and several high schools. We are once again in the Explorer class. There are 16 teams in our class.

We were the forth team to perform today. About an hour before our queuing time, we discovered a leak. It’s pretty stressful to work on repairing what MIGHT be leaking but not being able to test the repair. Will it hold? Was that really the problem? About a half hour before launch time, we had a short team meeting and the six team members took the ROV to the NASA pool. We were not allowed to accompany them, but we could watch the mission on a NASA closed circuit TV.

The ROV descended and tried to place a probe in a container 40’ under the water. It slipped just as it was almost in its receptacle and the ROV lost it. The kids spent a minute trying to retrieve it, but our prop wash would move it out of reach.

They wisely went to the next task: opening a drawer and retrieving three test probes. They placed them in a basket that the ROV brought down with it. Then it was off to a hose where they had to measure the temperature of the water coming out of a pipe. They were successful, but our temp sensor went bad and reported it as 40 degrees higher than it should have been No points for that one.
Then they found the tank with a red liquid in it. They successfully retrieved 600 ml of the liquid. At this time, they stated to bring the ROV up to the surface, but it just did not have enough power to go up. Was it taking on water? They pulled it up with the tether (5 point deduction for pulling on the tether), brought the liquid sample to the judges and sent the ROV back down to retrieve the basket with the probes (worth 5 points each). They hooked the basket but the ROV would hardly rise. As they throttled to full power, the 25 amp circuit breaker on the ROV tripped. It resets itself in about 5 seconds, but in that time the ROV descended and dumped the basket and it contents upon the pool floor.

Although they still had some time left and they did try to retrieve the items, the gripper claw just was not designed to pick items off the floor. They brought the ROV back up and our round was over. Our score was 52 points. We easily could have had another 45 points. A score that exceeded 100 had been within our reach.

We met the kids as they exited the elevator and they were pretty bummed out. We told them that they did everything that they possibly could and we were proud of them and it was a good score. Annalisa is the leader of the group and I think she and Lorenzo felt the worst. It’s hard to cheer someone up when they feel like they just witnessed their dream evaporate. She sat for a few minutes and then we started our debriefing routines and discussing why things were going bad (negative buoyancy, small water leak, power surge that tripped the breaker)

It was a quit lunch, but they started to feel a little better after the initial disappointment subsided. About this time, our school district superintendant, Raj Chopra, arrived and pumped the kids up. They were feeling much better.

After the lunch break, we were surprised to see that the other three teams that competed had catastrophic failures and received hardly any points at all. Oh well, at least we won’t be last.

As the afternoon went on, we watched one ROV after another commit hari kari. The 40 foot depth is taking quit a toll. As the tenth team finished, we are astounded to see that Carl Hayden is currently in first place in the ROV performance.

Tomorrow the six remaining teams compete, including MIT, powerhouse ROV college Monterey Peninsula and University of California Davis. At any rate, it looks like first place is up for grabs, but currently we have it. Maybe the volume of Good Luck wishes that you have all been sending us has had an effect.

This evening, our team went to Joe’s Crab Shack in Galveston on the Gulf and we ate seafood overlooking the bay. “Ew! these shrimps still have legs on them.”
A long walk around the shore and back we went to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.

Tomorrow we watch the last of the Explorer ROVs go through their missions and we go to the awards ceremony in the evening. It’s going to be interesting. (I know this sounds like a schmaltzy cliff hanger, but it all true!)

Fredi has begun posting our pictures at
Houston Day 1
Houston Day 2
Houston Day 3

Thanks,

Houston Day 2 National ROV competition

2005-06-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

What a day…

We arrived at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at the Johnson Space center. That’s where the astronauts train in a floating environment. It’s a really big pool, 50 feet deep and space station modules and shuttle parts for the men and women to practice mission tasks on before they have to do it in the real weightless space.

A little fact we learned last night – You have to look down towards Earth when orbiting to see meteors. Since they need the atmosphere to burn and the shuttle (and space station) are above the atmosphere… and they look little. When we look up to see them, they are 30 miles above us, but to the space crew, the meteor is 100+ miles below them.

Our ROV, “Smokey” survived the shipment from Phoenix and we had him set up in a hour. We has some soldering to finish, a job that we started when he had to be shipped. Right now, everything works 100%, but we did not get any pool time today to test him.

The big event for us was the technical presentation. Although teachers are allowed in the room to listen, Fredi, Sam, Ruth and I do not. There is nothing we can do to help and we think it just adds to the kids’ stress if we are there – and it shows that we really have confidence in them – which we do. Their 30 minute presentation stretched to 55. One person came out of the room and said, “You have every reason to be proud of those kids. I am not a judge, but they are good.” Then the kids came out all smiles and feeling good about their performance.

Cindy (our recovering cheerleader) is not the most technical member, but she is willing to do anthing asked of her 100%. She was in charge of explaining how the two video pictures and all the data was transmittied through the hair thin 200’ long fiber optic cable. When one judge asked her what wavelengths were used, Cristian started to answer but the judge said he wanted to hear Cindy’s answer. She said it was basicly two different colors of light, one for the uplink data while at the same time, the other color carried the downlink data and it all goes serially, kind of like Morse code signals. Not the graduate engineer answer, but it was an elegant and correct answer. The kids felt REAL good about their test.

The hour-long Dayna Steele show was live from the NBL. She was kind enough to interview me about how cool the whole event was. She chatted with Oscar about college and the difficulties that undocumented high school graduates have. Marcos Garcia-Acosta, our mentor and friend from Intel spoke about the Dream Act and what can be done to move it on. (Write your congressman). Dayna has been so great with the kids. She truly loves them. She bugged Luis about going to college. He now has another mother pushing him.

Karen Suhm, our engineer mentor from Phoenix, while talking to the astronauts last night, learned a bunch of them had been rejected for the progam many times before being accepted. She had applied a few years ago. Anyway, she had a meeting today with Duane L. Ross who selects astronaut candidates and he pulled out her record and gave her some pointers. She is reapplying. That’s what is so neat about this whole experience. People are not telling our kids what to do, but doing very positive, ambitious, creative activities in front of them. We are all feeding off each other’s successes. What a way to learn.

In a few minutes we are off to the Johnson Space Center for a reception. We get to see all the cool stuff there and get even more excited about the fantastic technological achievements and meet many of the people who made it happen. I can see Karen training here in a year or two, and Cristian and Cindy in 10 more. And… well, some one has to be the first to step on Mars. I would not shock me that she is here this weekend.

Tomorrow at 11:00 is our underwater ROV test. Thirty minutes to complete all (or as many as we can do) tasks. Potentially we can do them all, if everything works like we hope it will. But then again, we have never had the ROV deeper than 12’ and there are quit a few points of stress on the machine. The kids are ready. Hopefully, we will be able to sleep some tonight.

Fredi is posting pictures at www.falconrobotics.org
So many people go to it that it shuts down at times. Be patient.

I’ll email an update tomorrow.

Thanks

Allan

Houston Day 1 National ROV competition

2005-06-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Early this morning the Carl Hayden High School Robotics team left Phoenix for the 2005 MATE ROV (Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle) competition in Houston, Texas. This year it is being held at the water pool in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the Houston Space Center.

We have made many new friends because of the April Wired article about last year’s contest. One of the people we met via email, is Dayna Steele, a radio personality here in Texas. She and her husband, Charlie the Wonder Husband, invited all the team to her house for dinner and to meet a few of her friends: Jose Hernandez, and many of his fellow astronauts. We chatted with astronaut Linda Godwin and others over pizza at the pool overlooking Clear Lake. Tales of looking DOWN to see meteorites, 16 sunrises and sunsets per day, how to abort a liftoff, and when we might send a person to the moon and Mars were buzzing thought the party.

How many movies have the scene where the astronauts and their families are socializing and talking about their training and the missions they will be on. WE WERE THERE!! Absolutely amazing!

Karen Suhm, our physicist friend and her husband Jerry are here with us. They are so positive to be around. Karen is going to reapply for the astronaut program.

Our friend and mentor from Intel, Marcos Garcia-Acosta, is here with us also. He had a great time discussing the Dream Act with Dayna’s husband, Charlie, who is a teat pilot and a flight trainer for the new astronauts.

Right now it is 9 pm and teachers Fredi Lajvardi, Sam Alexander and Ruth Reynoso are critiquing the kids technical presentation. The team has to present it for real tomorrow at 3:15 in the afternoon.

Tomorrow morning is also the day we set up our ROV and practice. Also The Dayna Steele show will be live from the pool.

Our competition written documents were turned in three weeks ago. Saturday morning the kids have to operate their ROV and perform the tasks in 40 foot deep water.

This year the six students are Cindy Castenada, Annalisa Regalado, Pablo Santillan, Luis Gueterrez, and retuning members Cristian Arsega and Lorenzo Santillan. Oscar Vasquez and Luis Aranda are here, but only as spectators.

Oscar will be gong to ASU this fall with a full scholarship. Luis will be going to the local community college in the fall. Cristian will have a full scholarship to ASU when he graduates next year and Lorenzo will be taken care of either at the community college or ASU. It’s been a fantastic year for the four veterans and it’s been a real joy watching them blossom.

Anyway, our ROV, “Smokey”, is sitting in a crate in the NASA warehouse waiting for us to pick him up after the opening ceremonies.

Fredi has posted pictures on our web site at www.falconrobotics.org.

I’ll try to post an update tomorrow evening. If tomorrow is anywhere near as exciting as tonight, this may be the best field trip of all time!!

Allan

FIRST

2005-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

Monday April 25, 2005

Saturday morning we felt we had a real good chance for the Chairman’s Award. Fredi and I discussed whether we should prepare the kids for not winning or let their enthusiasm and expectations keep soaring. We were afraid that if we did not win, they would be really disappointed. We kicked the ideas around and we knew we should tell them not to get their hopes up too high, but how often are we in contention for a national championship?

During the afternoon competitions, Josh Davis and Dan Green took advantage of their media passes and went to the media room. They also met with Dean Kamen and the top administrators of FIRST. We wondered if they were told the award winners, but we did not ask them because we assumed they wouldn’t tell us and we didn’t want to put them in an uncomfortable position. They never rejoined us as “team members” after their meeting so we assumed they were tipped off.

Between championship matches, lesser awards were awarded: Autodesk Animator award, Sportsmanship award, etc. During that time, Josh, Dan and the camera crew went up to the press room. That’s when we knew they HAD to know AND that we were not going to receive any awards until possibly at the end. We also noticed they were smiling a lot! The whole team was very pumped up.

After the last of the championship matches were over, it was time for the last three awards: The Rookie All Star, the Engineering Inspiration Award, and the Chairman’s Award. The camera crew was all over us, Josh and Dan were smiling, and we were ready.

The All Star Rookie Award went to a first year team, of course. When they started reading the presentation for the second highest award, we didn’t realize it was going to be presented to us until half way through the announcer’s script. I think we were all crushed and yet the kids kept up the smiles and cheered, even though they (and the adults) were very disappointed. And on top of all of that, the ABC camera crew is recording our reactions. We really did not prepare the kids on how to celebrate second place, yet they were truly phenomenal. Not one complaint, not one bad attitude. When the Chairman’s award was announced, our kids were one of the loudest teams in the 20,000 audience. I’m so proud of them.

The Atlanta weather turned bitter cold and the wind was blowing hard. The kids were emotionally drained, yet they bundled up and went to the large outdoor party held for all the teams at the Olympic Park. Everyone was asleep by 11:00 pm (I think). They had been running with little sleep and under high pressure for the last four days and their personal batteries were drained.

Sunday, everyone was awake by 10 or so and we had donuts, bagels, and some left over fruit for breakfast. The main event for the day was a trip to Six Flags and dinner at the Hard Rock Café.

With 1000 FIRST robotics teams competing, being awarded second place is quite an honor and no other Arizona school has gone this far. Even though we though we had done our best this year, the kids are already talking about what more they can do in the next 12 months: working in more junior high schools, reaching out to students who don’t see that they can excel and showing by example that math, science, engineering and hard work is very satisfying and a lot of fun. The students from Carl Hayden didn’t have to be prepared for second place; I think much of our culture has prepared them very well to be satisfied with second place. The Falcon Robotics team has learned how to get to first place. It’s in their character. In some ways it might be fortunate that they did not win first place because there is a lot more in them and there is a lot more in them.

Monday we visited the Arthur M. Blank Family Office building for lunch. We met a few old friends and made some new ones.

The flight back to Phoenix was uneventful and we were met by family and friends and our principal, Steve Ybarra.

Tuesday its back to school and time to get really serious about the ROV competition in June. MIT expects a worthy opponent!

Teachers Allan Cameron, Fredi Lajvardi, Ruth Reynoso and Debbie Cameron and Eunice DeRose are so in awe of our champion team members: Cristian Arcega, Michael Brown, Cindy Castaneda, Daniel Federle, Luis Gutierrez, Marco Gutierrez, Viridiana Gutierrez, Richard Hartlaub, Marie Keller, Gerica Rayas, Annalisa Regalado, Lorenzo Santillan and Pablo Santillan. And thank your Karen Suhm and Jerry Suhm for flying to Atlanta to help us out. You are the greatest mentors ever!!

Thanks,
Allan

FIRST

2005-04-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday April 23, 2005

We started the morning off with an exciting victory. There was one undefeated robot on the opposing team that had not lost a game. The strategy was to have Cristian drive into their backfield and prevent him from scoring. That’s exactly what he did. It was a game of high speed maneuvering and anticipating moves. It was an awesome match up. We handed them their only defeat.

Out second match was exciting also, but we lost. We played a great defense, but without our ally robots scoring, we really had no chance of wining.

We were treated to lunch by some administrators and students from Purdue University. Sometimes I report too much about the competitive aspects of the FIRST experience and not enough about the friends we make. Purdue held a regional competition this year and they think it is a terrific way to recruit perspective students into their engineering program, including students from Arizona. They were a fun group of people.

All day yesterday and today, Cindy and Viri have visited all 340 teams and asked them for team t-shirts. They must have close to one hundred now and they plan to make a quilt with the t-shirt designs. It’s a great idea.

Dan Green from ABC news and his crew have been filming us today. He is quite a guy. He had a meeting with Dean Kamen and talked Dean into coming and visiting us in our pit area. We took photos and had a nice visit. He mentioned quite a few people sent him the Wired article.

Late afternoon everyone was in the Georgia dome. We felt we had a very good chance to win the highest award, the Chairman’s Award. It was not to be. We won the second place award, the Engineering Inspiration Award, a first for the state of Arizona and by for the best we have ever done at FIRST.

We all experienced a strange set of emotions: joy for winning the second highest award, and disappointment for not winning the first place award. I guess that is how silver medalists in the Olympics feel. Everyone is proud that we genuinely did our best to promote math, science and engineering in our school and community and we have the most graciously professional young men and women but I think the kids will somehow do even more in the next 12 months.

We spent the last hour this evening in our hotel room with a team from Washington state. They are interested in expanding their team into the MATE ROV tournament..

It’s been quite a day (and some of it will be on Nightline in a week or two) and I’m tired, Good night

Allan

FIRST

2005-04-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Friday April 22, 2005

Well, the bad news is that we lost our first three games. The kids really drove the robot well, but the competition IS tougher and our allies did not score as many points as we wished. The forth and fifth games did go our way and our recode is 2-3-0. There are two more qualifying rounds tomorrow.

The last game we played had an undefeated robot and our alliance told the Falcons to contain that number one robot. Although the opponent was fast, Cristian was able to pin their robot. It was quite a one-on-one match up. Our alliance won that round thanks to our great defense.

Marie, Annalisa and Luis made our Chairman’s presentation to the judges at three o’clock. They felt they did a real good job of presenting our influence on the local community, especially with junior high students and our lobbying with Governor Napolitano and legislators. Throw in all the national publicity that they have garnered and they have a strong case. Tomorrow afternoon, the last and most prestigious award will be announced.

This evening, Dan Green from ABC News Nightline joined us. Josh Davis, author of the Wired article also arrived. The kids questioned them for tow hours this evening. It was the best seminar I have ever attended. Cindy was so interested in their careers that we asked Dan if Cindy could intern with him tomorrow when he meets with Dean Kamen. Hopefully that will happen.

We found out this evening that our team will be on page A1 of the Arizona Republic www.azcentral.com We all phoned home so our families will save copies.

It’s late and everyone is sleeping and this is going to be a short report.

Thanks,

Allan

FIRST

2005-04-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

April 19, 2005 Update
Scholarship fund as of 4/18/2005: $47,830
Update, Thursday, April 21, 2005

We left school about 9 am Wednesday morning for an 11:30 flight. Our party consisted of 13 students, 4 chaperones and 1 grandma Teachers Fredi Lajvardi, Ruth Reynoso, Debbie Cameron and I, along with Deb’s mom, Eunice DeRose, are taking 13 of the most fantastic kids to Atlanta for the FIRST National Championships. Several people recognized Christian and Lorenzo from the WIRED article at the airport.---the price of celebrity!

The flight was uneventful. Marie, Cindy and Lorenzo were doing homework the whole flight, Mrs. Reynoso was busy putting the boarding passes in alphabetical order – not a good sign – we will have to watch her.

We arrived in beautiful Atlanta and boarded the subway to the hotel, Deb and Grandma rented a car and became the official Falcon Robotics “crate toters. We celebrated our arrival with a “barbeque beef dinner”.

At the hotel, we met a group of Lego League students from North Carolina. The “Fuzzy Monkeys” are now our shadow team. They come by our pit area and we treat them like insiders. They and we LOVE it.

This morning we went to the arena and unpacked our robot, Adam. He’s been in storage in Atlanta since our March contest in Arizona. Teams are not allowed to work on their ‘bots between competitions. Except for dead batteries, Adam is ready to go. We did some programming, made some minor improvements, and played a few practice rounds.

A team from France came and visited us in our pit area. Gerica, who is bilingual used her French class skills and we communicated rather well. I guess Gerica is bilingual-and-a-half

We have four freshman with us. They are the most amazing freshman we have ever had on our team. Michael and Daniel went to each and every one of the 341 high school team pit area, introduced themselves, told them about our robot team and gave them a copy of the Wired article.

Frosh Marco has taken over the pit area. He has become the consummate Pit Boss. He knows where every tool is supposed to be and he makes sure it’s there. He reminds everyone to wear their safety glasses. We have the tightest pit area in the arena.

Pablo is Lorenzo’s younger brother. He is the master-of-all-trades. He has become our “goto guy”. Freshmen are supposed to be shy and quiet. This year we have veterans. It’s amazing!

Deb and Grandma have been driving around all day doing our shopping: a cart from Home Depot, food from Costco, and driving back to the hotel for the forgotten items. They ran back to Costco and brought back 5 pizzas, 3 cases of soda pop and fruit and salad. Party Central was in Mrs. Reynoso’s room. I guess we won’t worry about her any more,. The kids love her.

The kids are now swimming, relaxing, and getting ready for the competition to start tomorrow.

Breaking News:. We were on National Public Radio’s Here and Now”. You can hear it on their website:: www.here-now.org/shows/2005/04/20050421_17.asp

Speaking of websites, Fredi is posting pictures of our trip on our school site:
www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=39144&sc_timestamp=1114141662

The FIRST competition is being televised:
NASA Television can be seen in the continental United States on AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, Transponder 9, 3880 MHz, vertical polarization, audio at 6.8 MHz. If you live in Alaska or Hawaii, NASA TV can now be seen on AMC-7, at 137 degrees west longitude, Transponder 18, at 4060 MHz, vertical polarization, audio at 6.8 MHz.
In the Phoenix Areas, COX digital cable channel 117
Direct TV channel 376
The programs listed below are changes to the general NASA Television schedule. All programs subject to change without notice. All times are Eastern U.S. time.

April 22, Friday
1 p.m. - 5 p.m. Eastern Time - Championship/FIRST Robotics, Atlanta, Ga. - AMES

April 23, Saturday
9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Eastern Time - Championship/FIRST Robotics, Atlanta, Ga. - AMES

It is also being webcast over the Internet, but I don’t have the details. Search for “NASA FIRST” and you find the details.

Competition starts tomorrow.

April 16, 2005 -------- Update

2005-04-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2005 -------- Update
This has been a busy few weeks for the Carl Hayden Robotics Club. The April Wired article “La Vida Robot” http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html which highlighted four of our students has produced an outpouring of support for the four kids as well as congratulations for Fredi Lajvardi, Sam Alexander and myself. We will see where this all leads.

Right now we are packing for our trip to Atlanta for the FIRST robotics championship. http://www.usfirst.org/ A few weeks ago we competed in Arizona and we were awarded the highest award, the Chairman’s Award:

“The FIRST Robotics Competition is about much more than the mechanics of building a robot or winning a competitive event. It is about the impact FIRST has on those who participate in the program and the impact of FIRST on the community at large. The FIRST mission is to change the way America’s young people regard science and technology and to inspire an appreciation for the real-life rewards and career opportunities in these fields.
The Chairman’s Award was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition as our ultimate goal for transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encourage more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists.
The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and which embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST. It remains the most prestigious team award FIRST presents.”

We are departing Phoenix this Wednesday with 13 students and a few chaperones. Josh Davis, the author of the Wired article and friend, will meet us there. I think there will be some other media coverage there also. I will email our experiences when we are in Atlanta.

Speaking of media, we have received quite a few movie offers. I’m thrilled to report Warner Brothers has bought the rights to the ROV story. They plan to make a feature theatrical film. The producer is John Wells (or West Wing, E.R.) The current game around school is who should play everyone. (I think Sean Connery should play me. “Cameron, Allan Cameron”. It will take years, but what a surrealistic experience.

For those who have been asking about the four kids: I think they will all get the higher education they wish. They have received over $44,000 in scholarship money to split and many offers of assistance. Most likely they will choose local community colleges and/or Arizona State University. I know they will be successful because they have hundreds (if not thousands) of people encouraging them. Their world has expanded a hundredfold.

A lot of people ask what they can do to help. The article mentions the “Dream Act”, federal legislation that is introduced every year that allows undocumented children who have been in the U.S for years and graduate from high school and have no criminal record to apply for temporary residency. If they go to college or the military, they can become permanent residents. It will take a lot of people writing to their congressman encouraging them to support the bill. These kids already are Americans. They were brought to the U.S. by their parents; they attended our school, play baseball, join the Scouts and most go to church every week. As young adults they will get married, have children and will be contributing to our society. These are exactly the people we want to belong in our neighborhoods, not drive them away.
http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/DREAM/DREAM%20Judiciary%20Sumry_040504.pdf

This morning, National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition, Saturday” played an interview with us. Susan Stamberg interviewed us and it can be heard at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4603454

We are building our current ROV to compete in the June MATE ROV competition in June. http://www.marinetech.org/rov_competition/2005/index.php Not only will we be competing against MIT, but aobotics and Artificial Intelligence powerhouse, Carnegie Mellon University will be joining the competition.

I should be sending the next report from Atlanta, GA. Thanks for all your support.

Allan

2005-04-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

April 1, 2005 -------- General Information about the Robot Club follows:

The Robot Club: Falcon Robotics Team 842
Now, about the robot team. The ROV competition is only a small part of what we do. Fredi Lajvardi and I have always had "clubs" at school so we could work with the kids on project that may not exactly fit in a particular class’s curriculum. I have had the Amateur Radio Club, KC7KFF, for 13 years or so. Fredi had the kids build and race electric cars. They were quite successful. We still continue the activities.

However, four years ago we decided to enter the FIRST robotics competition http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/
Just two weeks ago, the team was awarded the highest award at the Arizona Regional competition, the Chairman's Award. It was presented to us by the inventor and founder of FIRST, Dean Kamen. We will be going to Atlanta GA with 13 of the students on the team to compete for the national title. There will be 300+ schools, 10000 people all cheering and celebrating engineering! It's really something!

We also build a pumpkin throwing trebuchet in the fall and our high school kids mentor six FIRST Lego robot teams in neighborhood schools. The Arizona State Lego robot championship is held at our school.

The point of all of this is not to build the killer robot, but to expose our kids to the excitement of engineering and the value of an education. We have a few engineers who come and help us. The kids become friends with them. Except for teachers, it is usually the first person they ever knew with a college degree. It really makes a difference. Grades and attendance usually improve.

What we really want to see is kids starting to look at math, science and engineering as something attractive and exciting, not subjects to be avoided. The culture in our country is not promoting too many positive values. When we give talks we like to quiz the audience about a sports figure or someone in the entertainment industry. It's amazing the wealth of knowledge we have on so many people in the "amusement industry". But when we ask the audience to name an inventor -- who is alive, it is usually very silent. We don't even ask for the name of a female inventor, or a Hispanic inventor. The point being, Who are the role models for our young people? What do they see on television on in the movies? How are scientists portrayed? We are really trying to change our culture.

So, while the story in Wired was about four students, there are dozens of students who are equally talented and dedicated. The real story is that there are probably hundreds of very talented young men and women at our school that we are not inspiring or who give up because they see little value in a high school diploma. There are a lot of closed doors when a person is undocumented.

We are trying to involve as many people as possible. There have been, literally, hundreds of individuals who have donated money or time in our projects. Companies like Honeywell, Intel, Microchip, Wells-Fargo, and Phelps Dodge have helped sponsor us. (The trip to the nationals in Atlanta costs $17,000). Many neighborhoods businesses like Fastsigns, Southwest Fasteners, have donated supplies and services

Conclusion
Fredi and I (and Sam and Marcos and all the other teachers) appreciate all the praise that people have sent us. The author, Josh Davis did a fantastic job and we have all became fast friends with him and the photo crew and editors of Wired. I think the majority of teachers that I have ever met work very hard and do wonders to raise all of our kids. We really are not doing anything that millions of other teacher are not doing. However, I don’t think anyone can possibly be having more fun than we are having!

I’ll keep you posted. .

Our Robotics web site: www.falconrobotics.org

La Vida Scholarship

2005-03-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

March 30 2995 ---------------

It has taken quite a bit of time, but our school district has finally entered the internet age with it’s first Paypal account. You can access it through the Wired magazine web site:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/donate.html

or directly:

https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=Partnership%40phxhs%2ek12%2eaz%2eus&item_name=La%20Vida%20Robot%20Scholarship%20Fund&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0¤cy_code=USD

Scholarship Information:

This is a Phoenix Union Partnership entity that can accept money, issue receipts and is tax deductible. It is for the “La Vida Robot” Scholarship fund. The restrictions are:

If the funds indicate it is to go to "La Vida Robot", the funds can only be disbursed by the approval of Allan Cameron OR Fredi Lajvardi.

Verbally we have agreed that the funds are to be disbursed only to the four students/alumni mentioned in the Wired article "La Vida Robot" (April 2005), Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Oscar Vazquez, and/or Luis Aranda to be used for post secondary education.

Written guidelines will be formalized within the next week. Generally, one forth all funds will be originally allocated to each student/alumni for educational expenses. Cameron or Lajvardi will decide what educational expenses are appropriate. After a period of time (e.g. 3 years) of academic inactivity, a student's allocation will revert to be equally divided among the remaining group.

The purpose is to help finance the kids’ educational activities to earn a degree or employment skills until the funds are exhausted.

There is no overhead or administration costs except for the charges by Paypal (2.9%+$0.30 on each Paypal deposit).

2004-06-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

2004 ROV Championship

We departed from Carl Hayden at 4 am Thursday. We were to have a team of 6, but Mike our driver and another student were not able to go. It takes quite a bit of practice to drive the ROV, but Oscar, the captain, had a half hour of practice and was willing to do his best. Oscar would just have to keep track of the strategy of the game and drive.

Christian was the vertical driver. Since a lot of the tasks had to do with picking up objects or inserting objects into tubes, the vertical controls were very critical.

Lorenzo was the “switch man”. He was in charge of opening and closing the gripper, turning on the pump and switching the cameras on board the ROV.

Luis was the teather man. He had to manage the ROV umbilical cord. Too tight or too lose and the cord connecting the ROV to the surface would be cut and the ROV would be dead. He also had to retrieve objects that the ROV brought to the side of the pool and was in charge of putting the ROV into and out of the pool.

We arrived at the seaside campus of UCSB in the afternoon, checked into our dorm rooms and unloaded the van and Fredi’s pickup truck. There was a welcome meeting and we met a few people that we knew and met a lot of new people – about 250 in all. That evening, we downloaded our new program, but we had some “voodoo” control problems. Sometimes the thrusters would not go into reverse, or some control that was working would unexpectedly do crazy things. We finally got it working and went to sleep.

Breakfast at 7:30 and then we took all our equipment to the pool for practice. We had more control problems and the Pelican case that contained our controls has a small leak that was getting worse. We decided that since our ROV seemed to be on the edge of failing, that we would not practice any more and hope that it would still have 30 minutes of operation left in it for Saturday’s underwater competition. We decided to order a new seal for our “watertight” case via overnight delivery.

Friday afternoon, we were scheduled for our technical presentation. The kids had gone over the technical details on the trip to UCSB, but now that the hour was approaching, they were nervous and insecure. So they stayed in the pit area and explained
EVERYTHING to anyone who visited our pit. It was great practice and they were able to answer everyone’s questions. They pointed out our strengths: small diameter tether, on-board battery, digital controllers, safety kill switch and our other innovations. When it was time for the half hour interview with the judges, the four team members went in the room. The teachers stayed out. We felt there was nothing that we could do to help and if we were there, it might add to the tension. Besides, we felt maybe the judges would feel it was a show of our confidence in the students, which it was.

Thirty-five minutes they emerged smiling. The kids said the judges stopped them after 20 minutes so they could ask questions. The kids felt the questions were easy and that the judges would give them a good score. The students felt nervous the first minute or so, but as they took turns explaining the various systems, everyone keep smiling and it was a pleasant and exciting experience.

Friday evening, we started trouble shooting our problems. If the case was going to leak, we wanted to absorb the water in the case, so we went and bought some tampons to put in the bottom of the case. Imagine a teenage boy in the feminine products isle choosing the most absorbent brand of tampons. Engineering is a stressful occupation!

The intermittent “voodoo” problems were traced to a faulty 25 wire cable. The kids were up until 2:30 in the morning soldering 50 tiny wires; any one that was open, shorted, or wired on the wrong pin, would possibly cause a failed mission.

A few words about the scoring. The competion is a composite of several scores: the underwater missions, the technical report document, the technical presentation, and a poster score. The only scores we would see would be the underwater missions scores. The rest would be given on Sunday when the winners were announced.

Saturday morning ROVs were going through their missions. Ours was scheduled for the afternoon. We had one short practice to see if the new gasket would leak. It did a little. We pulled it out and waited and watched the other schools going through their missions.

In our “explorer class” there were 10 other teams. Many teams had catastrophic failures: inoperable motors or burnt out electronics. Many of the ‘bots were more sophisticated than ours, especially the ones from MIT, Cape Fear, Long Beach. Monterey college actually had two ROVS and one surface craft that had cameras looking down upon the scene – most impressive.

MIT scored 48 points, Cape Fear 40 and three others had 5 to 20 points. We were sixth and it was our turn to “fly”

The team had a 5 minute limit to set up. All controls were set up in the tent. The umbilical cord was laid out, power turned on, measuring devices set and we were ready to go.

The kids saw the scanner that was to be retrieved, but it was difficult to grasp. It laid on a tarp and near an obstacle. As Oscar and Christian would slink towards it grab it, the wash from the propellers would flutter the tarp which would wiggle the target until it fell in a position where our claw could not grab the ring.

Next they want to do the length measurement. They successful clipped the tape measure to on end and drove back to the other end. Our black and white cameras that worked so well in the indoor practice pool, were overloaded in the bright sunlight, even in 11 feet of water.

The next task attempted was to pump 500 ml or more from the “toxic can”. The drivers had to insert a ¼ inch pipe on our ROV into a ½ inch pipe, turn on our pump for 15 seconds or so. THEY did it! They brought the sample up to the surface in a “toxic water balloon.” We received 5 extra points for exceeding the 500 ml, but lost 3 points because we had sucked in some pool water thus diluting our sample.
The reaming time was spent searching in the hidden reef for objects. We found all but one. We finally tangled our tether on the structures and finally tangled the tether in our propeller. Luis pulled our ROV and even though there were a couple of minutes left the kids called the mission over because they saw one of the controller case latches had unhooked and there might be a disastrous amount of water in the case. Our final score: 32 points. After seven team missions, we were in third place. Not bad for a high school from the desert. We felt we could have done better, but we could have done a lot worse also. We were happy.

Saturday the judges evaluated all the posters, but no one was told the results. All we knew were the underwater scores.

Sunday morning two weak teams earned a few points. When Monterey launched their two ROVs and it radio controlled surface boat, we watched intently. It seemed that they were taking longer than they should. They were having trouble with their cameras appearently. At the end of the 30 minute period, they had earned 30 points. Carl Hayden was third in the underwater missions, second only to MIT and Cape Fear Community College. We felt very proud. The other two high schools were in last place.

Since we had nothing to do, we went into Santa Barbara to the beach and pier and relaxed. Previously we had walked around campus and down to the sore near campus. There were no classes in session so the only people we really saw on campus were fellow roboteers. We met a lot of people and learned a lot from the people and studying their ROVs.

Time was approaching for the awards banquet and we arrived a little early because we felt we might have earned 3rd place, but surely we would win one of the lesser awards.

After the meal, the awards began. We were presented the “Judges Award”. We marched up to the stage, but I was afraid that this might be our only award. Kind of like, “Those Hayden kids came so close, let’s give them the Judge’s Award.”

A few awards later, when the award for the elegant design was announced, Carl Hayden was called up for our second award. There were some magnificent machines and we were surprised to win the design award. Well, we felt we would be the most awarded high school, at least!

Then the major awards began. When we were announced as the winners of the technical documentation award, we were shocked. That meant our document scores exceeded MITs! We were confident that we whould get the third place over all award!

The third place award was announced: “Cape Fear Community High School!” Wow! Did that mean we got second or were we fourth or so? Our table was very tense. I don’t think any of us really expected second. Amazing.

“Second place is awarded to (longest pause in the history of the world) Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Oh my God!! Could we be first. Maybe it Montery. But they surely had less points in the underwater competition and the technical document. Did our kids do real bad in the presentation? We were absolutely on the edge of our seats.

“First place for the 2004 MATE ROV championship goes to ….. Carl Hayden High School” OH MY GOD!!!!! We walked up to the stage absolutely in shock! It’s an emotional moment that none of us will ever forget.

We stayed a while to take pictures and thank our hosts and new friends. There was no way we were going to go to sleep, but we didn’t want to mix with the other teams (especially MIT) and feign humble talk while we are screaming in our heads, “We beat MIT!). So we walked down to the deserted beach and hiked a mile or so while what just happened sunk in. The rookie inner city public high school team from the desert kicked ass! The most prestigious engineering university with a team of a dozen or so brilliant minds had been beat by a team of four high school kids! Colleges that have marine engineering programs were out-designed by the Falcons.

WOW, what do we do next?

Student members Luis Aranda, Oscar Vasquez, Cristian Arcega, and Lorenzo Santillan.
Teachers: Sam Alexander, Allan Cameron and Fredi Lajvardi

Thank you sponsors:

Seabotix, Distagage, Omega Engineering, Scuba Sciences, MotorGuide, Borris Innocenti, Lights Camera Action, Walt Ahland, MATE, Southwest Fastener, Wells Fargo, Honeywell, Microchip, Phelps Dodge, Intel and the many individual sponsors of the Falcon Robotics Team!