The students of Hyper Robotics

At another Wednesday afternoon meeting, the students of the Hyper Robotics team attended to their various responsibilities as they prepare for the upcoming robotics season.

The mechanical part of the team worked on designing a new tool crate, so that the team’s tools will be organized conveniently during competition. One student involved in the process was junior Jason Savage, who explained how in preparation for competition, experienced members have been teaching those new to the team how to build robots.

Savage, who aspires to be a mechanical engineer, sees the valuable experience he can gain by being involved with the team.

“It gives you a hands-on experience in engineering,” said Savage. “Mechanical engineering, electrical and computer science is all kind of wrapped up into one on this team. It’s a good first look at what you’d be doing if you went into that career.”

Part of what those involved in the mechanical part of the robot need to do is make the robot’s physical design. A former member of the pit crew for competitions, alumni volunteer James Keith described how the mentors and students team up to design the robot each season.

“Designing the robot just depends on what the game is because sometimes there are different aspects, like you may need speed or something,” said Keith. “The engineers help us out a lot with that. They show us the designs, and basically we take the old robots, show how those work, then try to apply them to the new game and see what we can do to modify the design.”

On the other side of designing the robot are those students working on the electrical layout of the machine. Jin Lem and Ming Wood are seniors responsible for the electrical aspects of the robot.

“We wire the robot and we keep the robot running,” said Lem, who has been with the team for four years and would like to serve as a mentor or start another team down the line.

“The mechanical side does the different design and we kind of follow up and see how we can distribute all the power and how everything is going to be controlled throughout the robot,” said Wood, an aspiring electrical engineer, who wants to design circuits in the future.

Not all the work is in engineering at this point, as members who work on the marketing and animation are busy learning to work with new equipment and organize fundraisers.

“Right now we’re just trying to learn the new program because they give us a new program each year,” said Abigail Egan, a sophomore who wants to be a writer, and gets good experience with the non-engineering aspects of the team. Egan writes the team’s entry for The Chairman’s Award, which describes the team and all that it does.

As the students prepared for competition it was up to the mentors to decide which regional competition the team would be attending next year, depending on travel costs and the time and cost to ship the robot.

Despite still being months away from competition, the team members are all doing their part to prepare for the 2009 season.

Check back for more on the Hyper Robotics Team in subsequent posts.