A swinging door on the northern end of the first floor conceals a long, narrow hallway. Walking down it, you’ll likely hear the bustling of students building, jotting down notes and laughing. Taking a sharp right turn, you’ll enter room 1297 and be greeted by, among the humans, quite a few robots.
Two of Oak Park and River Forest High School’s VEX Robotics teams have qualified for the state series on Feb. 28 and March 1. There, they will use their robots to compete in several rounds of this year’s game against teams from all over the state. Top scorers will qualify for the VEX Worlds Competition, which will take place in Dallas, Texas at the end of April.
VEX Robotics competitions challenge high school students to design, code and run a robot through a new game each year, competing against teams from other schools. This year, the game is called High Stakes, and the robots have to maneuver through an obstacle course while collecting rings to put on stakes, attempting to gain more points than the other team. Robotics teams are tasked with memorizing each year’s extensive rulebook and creating a complex plan and product to adhere to the competition’s guidelines.
OPRF’s VEX Robotics Club meets on Wednesdays and Thursdays after school. OPRF teachers Kelsey Kaiser and Anthony Romeo sponsor the club. “I don’t typically tell them what to do; it’s more of an advisor role,” said Romeo, who has been a sponsor for more than two years and also teaches Physics-Chemistry at OPRF.
He instead asks students questions such as, “What do you need? What can I help with? Do you need me to find a resource for you?”
In the usual robotics season, the club has more than 50 members, so teamwork is a priority. Club presidents Myles Millhouse and Simon Bade-Ngugen, who are both seniors on the state-bound team 99371B, are big proponents of collaboration. On a typical team, there must be a driver, coder, builder and notetaker. “Overall, we try to make sure no one is without a job to do,” said Millhouse.
Millhouse and Bade-Nguyen’s team also consists of sophomores Jaxon Young, Andrew Borel and Ryan Campbell. Millhouse acts as the team’s lead designer and builder, while Bade-Nguyen is the coder. Both work to constantly innovate their respective roles with new materials and programming. “I use software like Onshape to create 3D models of our robot in advance, allowing us to model complex mechanisms and test integrations,” said Millhouse.
Bade -Nguyen added that he is implementing a new algorithm, so he currently has to, “write, set up and tune the PID (proportional–integral–derivative control) for our robot’s drivetrain and lifting mechanism. PID control helps the robot not over or undershoot the robot’s desired position.”
The other state-bound team, 99371H, is composed of seniors Lars Olson, Asher Frank, Lily Zinthefer, Sam Premo-Hopkins, Sophie He and Milo Hansen. “It takes a lot of coordination, but in the end, it pays off,” said Olson, who has been in the club since his freshman year. “There’s a lot of learning you can do and it’s really fun to do progressively better through competitions, ” added Frank, who just joined the club this year.
“I regret not doing it sooner… I stick with it because of the community. You build a team. It’s collaboration in a way that you don’t do at school.”
“The cool thing is a lot of times the teams just stay the team for four years…we do a pretty good job of finding personalities that mesh well,” added
Romeo.
The club does not turn away any potential members, but instead gives them a tryout process to see where they would best fit. New members are given a collaborative design challenge while “the seniors walk around and take notes on how kids are interacting with one another, and who they feel are strong leaders,” said Romeo.
“We see students across all ranges of experience join our club, including those with no experience whatsoever… So if you love the engineering process, or even have a slight feeling that it would be something you enjoy, don’t be afraid to join and find out what it’s all about,” added Millhouse.
