Robot Warriors

The athletes went head to head on the gymnasium floor, blocking, ramming and clawing one another as students cheered from the bleachers and parents beamed with pride, rooting their favorites on to victory. It made little difference that the competitors were made of metal and plastic.

That was the scene Sunday at Chatsworth High, where robots created by high school students from California and Arizona battled it out at a practice meet in preparation for the eighth annual FIRST--For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology--Robotics Competition, a national event to be held in Florida in April.

About 50 people showed up to watch the budding high school inventors and designers test their robots’ skills before the regional meet in San Jose next month. Because of rain and unfinished entries, only five of the 16 scheduled teams turned out.

FIRST, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit organization, created the competition to generate interest in engineering and technology among youths by showing that science can be just as rewarding as traditional sports, said Wendy Wooten, a science teacher at Chatsworth High.

“This is where the most talented and creative people win,” said 16-year-old Matt Kaufman, of the 60-member Chatsworth robotics team.

“Just because you’re not a basketball player doesn’t mean you don’t have something going for you,” the aspiring scientist said.

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The robot gladiators are designed and built in just six weeks by teams of students, teachers and professional engineers. Many cost as much as $45,000 and are funded by corporate sponsors.

Matt is proud of HOMER 2--Human-Operated Mechanically Engineered Robot--the Chatsworth team’s sleek and swift robotic warrior named in honor of their favorite “Simpsons” cartoon character. “ ‘Bart’ was suggested, but it didn’t work out,” he said.

The team has come a long way since 1996, when it first entered the competition with a slipshod robot named “Robo Charlie” that was prone to breakdowns. “We’d start a match, he’d move 10 feet and break,” Matt recalled. “It was really pretty shoddy.”

At last year’s national competition, Chatsworth finished 52nd out of the 217 schools. On Sunday, team members hovered like surgeons over HOMER 2, chiseling and bolting their creation in an effort to remedy technical glitches. But the robot’s pulley system still had a few bugs.

“Hopefully we can have it worked out [before San Jose],” said team member Alex Collins.

Meanwhile, on the school basketball court, Bionic Bulldog from Kingman High in Laughlin, Ariz., and Lam-bot from Don Bosco Technical Institute in Rosemead duked it out on a soccer-like playing field, complete with ramps and playground balls. The students’ challenge: to make the robots place the balls into 6-foot-high goals and, for extra points, maneuver them to grasp a bar and do a pull-up.

Lam-bot was no match for Bionic Bulldog, which with its gigantic arm on wheels outscored the bulky, tower-shaped robot 11 to 0, delivering a few body blows in the process. “Is there a Robo-Doc in the house?” the announcer asked after the match.

But for Kingman students, the victory was short-lived. Under competition rules, no matter how many points the winning team scores, it only receives three times more points than the losing team.

“We want them to win, but not enough to embarrass their opponents,” Wooten explained.

Don Bosco Tech student Edward Janke wasn’t disappointed with the loss. The aspiring electrical engineer said he joined the school’s robotics team because he hopes to one day design robots for space exploration.

“I just wanted to find out what makes these puppies tick,” he said.