In the News: State robotics championship

HILLSBORO -- It's not often that state championships are won by scoring points for your opponent, but that's how it worked Sunday at the FIRST Tech Challenge state robotics championship.

"We work really hard at setting an environment where teams help each other out," said Ed Epp, who organized the championship along with fellow FIRST representative Cathy Swider.

The scene inside the gym at South Meadows Middle School was like a miniature professional boxing arena. Corporate sponsorship banners fluttered behind 12-by-12 battle rings, with red and blue platforms marking each competitor's corner.

But instead of a bloodthirsty crowd, the bleachers were filled with proud parents and brainy teenagers dressed in matching team T-shirts, face paint and kooky costumes. Instead of muscle-bound pugilists, the competitors were robots. And instead of trash talking there were handshakes and acts of generosity.

Don't be mistaken, the robotics competition was relentlessly competitive. Teams took meticulous notes tracking their opponents' performance and spent nearly every spare moment conducting quick fixes on bots or honing their technique in "the pit," a cafeteria-turned-bullpen where teams wait between matches.

On Sunday, the pit was filled with posters highlighting teams' other accomplishments: community service projects, countless hours of preparation and research, friendships borne out of a shared interest in applied technology.

Though this is a robotics competition, the actual robots are only a fraction of the overall competition. More important, tournament organizer Swider said, is the preparation that went into making the bots and the sense of camaraderie and teamwork the teams develop.

Simply having the best bot isn't enough to win the coveted Inspire Award, the competition's top honor. For that, you must have a stellar in-the-ring performance as well as good sportsmanship and community service. FIRST Tech Challenge has gone so far as to trademark the term "coopertition" to describe its philosophy.

"It means cooperating in competing," Swider said. "It means off the field, you have to work as hard as you can to make the other teams best as you can."

The FIRST Tech Challenge is designed to foster sportsmanship. Teams are randomly selected to form alliances with an opposing team, and their ally in one round could well be their opponent in the next.

And there's one more twist. At the end of a match, teams take their opponent's points. So in many ways, it's in each team's best interest for their competitors to be really good.

There are stories of past teams lending motors to opponents, coaches donating time to opposing teams, and teams giving up their spot in a competition to an opponent who needs to qualify for the state championship.

On Sunday, a loose screw on the Tiger Team's robot caused the Newberg group's battery to die quickly. Lincoln High School's Nanites came to the rescue by lending the Tiger Team one of their batteries. Tiger Team member Tyler Krupicka, 15, said it wasn't unusual; the Tigers have lent their laptop computer to opponents in the past. Such gestures are just part of the deal.

"We feel like if there's an issue we can always either talk to (competition organizers) or another team to get the part," Krupicka said.

The matches are scored through a complicated system in which teams accrue points for performing several tasks, including parking bots on cliffs, ramps and bridges in the ring, releasing small batons from dispensers placed around the ring and dropping the batons into small cylindrical goals. Points are docked for unsportsmanlike acts such as blocking an opponent's bot or tipping over their goal.

"Everything here is based to promote good sportsmanship, so in that kind of environment it's hard to not get along," Krupicka said.

The teams were among 74 Oregon teams to compete in qualifying competitions earlier this year. The 24 teams that made it to Sunday's state finals included teams from Portland to The Dalles. And they're part of a network of more than 1,400 teams across the nation and around the world.

In the end, Portland's Flaming Cup Noodles took home the Inspire Award. They'll join the competition's winning alliance of Westview High School's Short Circuits and West Salem High School's Titan Robotics Team 2 at the world championship competition in April in St. Louis.

And what became of Blue Steel, the rookie team from Hood River that overcame a laptop theft to make it to the state competition? They made it all the way to the finals, with very few glitches in the software they built on the fly following the theft.

"It was supercool just to make the finals," team member Roslyn Patrick-Sunnes said. "It was just really intense."

-- Kelly House, The Oregonian