Medical Lake High School robotics team prepping for competition after early victory

As a timid freshman, Lauren Saue-Fletcher says she probably uttered around six words during her entire first year on the robotics team at Medical Lake High School. But the hands-on, collaborative nature of the club forced her to come out of her shell.

Now a senior and the team’s leader, Saue-Fletcher, 18, wrote about that transformation in her application to Stanford University, where she plans to study mathematical and computational science.

“It was all about how robotics helped me grow,” she said.

The Medical Lake robotics team, called the Circuit Breakers, is preparing its custom-built robot for a competition this month at West Valley High School in Spokane Valley. The team, which has 28 active students, is still celebrating a first-place victory at a recent competition in Clackamas, Oregon, where they squared off against three-dozen other Pacific Northwest schools.

The competitions are organized by FIRST, a nonprofit founded by Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway gyroscopic scooter. The format of the game changes each year, so students have to design, build and program their robots to meet specific parameters. In past competitions, robots have had to shoot balls into hoops and at a mockup of a medieval castle.

This year, the main objective is to hoist yellow cubes onto a giant, teetering scale in the center of an arena the size of a basketball court. The Circuit Breakers’ bot, dubbed CB3, uses a claw and rubber wheels to grab the cubes, then lifts them onto the scale with a mechanical arm.

“For every second the scale is tipped in our favor, we get a point,” Saue-Fletcher said.

Matches last 2 minutes 30 seconds, and schools collaborate to form three-robot alliances. For the first 15 seconds, the robots must be autonomous and cross what’s called the “auto line” at each end of the arena. After that, students control their machines with joysticks from the sidelines.

Saue-Fletcher said there are many good robotics teams in the Spokane area, and the Circuit Breakers are no exception. Last year, they competed in the FIRST world championship in Houston and left with an award for “excellence in engineering.”

“We’re really on an upward trend, and we’re hoping to go back to Worlds every year,” Saue-Fletcher said.

Bernie Polikowsky, a retired engineer who volunteers as a mentor for the team, said robots are “the perfect vehicle” for students to learn all kinds of technical skills.

Joshua Marsh, a Medical Lake junior in charge of programming the robot, said he’s learned two programming languages since he joined the club a year ago.

“There’s always areas we can improve in our code,” Marsh said. “We’re trying to get as much out of the robot as we can, as much precision as we can.”

Abigail Moody, a sophomore, has nearly mastered tools including a metal lathe and a CNC mill. She explained how students cut and welded aluminum rails to make the frame of the robot. They also drilled lots of holes in the aluminum to meet a 120-pound weight limit.

“You almost completely eliminate human error, except for programming errors, and if you do it correctly, it’s fairly safe,” Moody said, donning plastic safety glasses while showing off the mill. “Safety is our No. 1 priority.”

The whole robot is self-contained: the battery, the sensors, the electric motors, the gears and bicycle chain that dictate its movements. When the mechanical arm extends upward, the robot nearly doubles in height.

Several days a week, the robotics team meets after classes get out in a lab behind the high school’s main building, next to the wood and auto shops. Polikowsky helped launch the school’s robotics program about five years ago, and he said the project wouldn’t be possible if it were not for parents who volunteer their time and donate needed tools and supplies.

“It’s been really huge for our team because we have the ability to make parts here,” he said.

Robotics teacher Dan Soeland said the team has relied mostly on onetime grants. Sponsors have included Google, Boeing and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. But there is always a need for funding, Soeland said. The current robot cost about $4,000, he said.

“We’re competing against some pretty hefty competition who have a lot of resources,” he said.

While the competition is tough, Saue-Fletcher said other teams are always eager to help each other out, lending parts or tools when one breaks or gets forgotten.

Soeland said the robotics club teaches students a lot more than physics and engineering. To succeed in competition, they must also learn how to lead, communicate effectively and market themselves, he said. FIRST touts the virtue of “gracious professionalism.”

“It’s not just about the technology,” Soeland said.

The two-day competition at West Valley High School begins March 23.

Correction: This story was changed on March 15, 2018. A previous version misspelled Bernie Polikowsky’s surname, due to a reporter’s error.