Robotics team wins big Robotics team wins big (April 29, 2005)

Mountain View High students need help to get to nationals

By Kathy Schrenk

Hours of work over spring break and in the weeks before paid off for six Mountain View High School students as their robotics team won first place in the Northern California Botball competition Saturday in Santa Clara.

The team, dubbed the Los Altos Community Botball Robotics Team by the students, who live in Los Altos, was one of 33 teams in the contest. The challenge was to see whose custom-built and pre-programmed robots could race around a table-top course, grab objects and toss them into a basket for the most points.

The team members didn't expect to win going in, because they ran out of preparation time a couple days before the tournament and had to change their strategy, said freshman Neha Bhargava.

"We had to simplify it and focus on a couple of things instead of various things," she said. "We were expecting to go there and not do well; we didn't feel we were ready."

But the new strategy helped them win, Bhargava said.

This new game plan meant the Los Altos robots were going faster than the other teams', sophomore Richard Kwock said. "A lot of people were taking their time and going for accurate precision, but we just went for speed," he said.

Their unique style made the difference, said sophomore Russell White. "When we made it to the top four, we had this feeling like there was no way we could lose," he said. "We just kept winning and winning."

The contest was divided into two parts, according to contestant Travis Schuh: a seeding round where the robots compete against the clock to run up a high score, and a double elimination portion.

In the seeding round, the MVHS team had a score of 32; the second place team scored 26, and two third place teams tied with only 15.

The double elimination rounds pitted teams against each other based on their score.

"We stayed in the winners' bracket for most of the tournament until we lost in one of our last games because our robot missed scoring the high point object," Schuh said.

The Los Altos kids had to beat the undefeated team -- the only that had beaten them -- twice in the final round. "We ended up winning both times, making us the double elimination winners," Schuh said.

Now the team is looking forward to the national championship tournament, which will be held in July in Florida. But they're not sure they'll make it there, because they each need to raise about $1,000 for plane fare, hotel and tournament entry. So they are looking for sponsors and planning ways to raise funds. Anyone interested in helping the team raise the money to go to nationals can contact Michael Schuh at 650-604-1460 or visit www.losaltosrobotics.org or www.botball.org.
E-mail Kathy Scrhenk at kschrenk@mv-voice.com

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