Bear Feeder Project: Feeding the Bears at Woodland Park Zoo

Cascade Bruin Robotics takes on the challenge of keeping zoo keepers safe!

by Neil Palachuk, coach and lead mentor 

The Cascade Bruin Robotics Team of the Everett School District has accepted a challenge proposed by zoo keepers at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo to help design and build not a better mouse trap but a better bear feeder!

The zoo keepers at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo work hard at feeding the animals every day—no question about that. However, the keepers caring for the bears have to put a little more muscle into it. In order to stay safe, the keepers are required to feed the bears from outside the enclosure. This means throwing the food into the enclosure from 20-30 feet away. This process can definitely become tiresome very quickly.

Thus, the zoo keepers decided to challenge the Cascade Bruin Robotics Team to develop a new way to feed the bears. At the start of the project, the students came up with 2 designs. They then submitted the designs to the Zoo keeper, who in turn selected the design that uses an extendable PVC slide to feed the bears. Way to go, Bruins!
                          

Our New FTC Season!

By Julia

It’s almost that time again! FTC competitions are two weeks away and the Cascade Robotics teams have been working for nine long weeks to perfect every aspect of their robots. From initial design to finishing touches last-minute changes, the teams have started off a great season! Six work sessions left, and the robots are almost ready to compete. You can see the game animation on the FTC game page.

The BEAR Bots are almost finished with their robot; they still need to attach the part of the arm that picks up the blocks, wire the robot, and add some finishing touches to the code. After that, they will be ready to test all of the robot’s capabilities on the field that mentor Neil Palachuk built.

The Hibernotics, being a rookie team, still have a lot to do on their robot, but will be ready in time for the first competition. They are currently working on the arm to pick up the blocks. They still need to wire, program, and decide what else to add if they have time. They also have discussed the FTC awards and hope to earn a few like the Motivate Award or the Rockwell Collins Award. They are ordering flair items to help themselves stand out from the other teams at the competition.

The overall organization, Cascade Robotics, is still in the process of ordering T-shirts and we hope to get them before the first competition round. We are also working on various outreach events, including volunteering for FLL competitions, fundraising, attending school events, and presentations at local businesses. We are also trying to improve our media presence with Facebook and our blog, and we have plans to start sending out monthly e-newsletters in the future.

Thanks to all the mentors, sponsors, and parents for their help so far! Good luck to all the team members on the rest of their season!

Our FIRST FRC Competition!

It has been a busy six weeks since we bagged and tagged the robot. We have been working on buttons, T-shirts, pit decorations and general organization for our three-day field trip. Some of the team members and mentors Tom Newton and Neil Palachuk took a trailer loaded with the robot and equipment to the Century Link Event Center Wednesday evening. All team members arrived at school bright and early Thursday morning for our first day setting up the pit and trying to pass inspection. We were able to pass inspection and be prepared early enough for three practice rounds on the field Thursday afternoon (which, according to experienced FRC mentor Tom Newton, is unusual).

Friday the pits became more chaotic, as we had visits from the public and FLL expo participants. We also had many visits from and interviews with a variety of judges. They were especially interested in our Chairman's Award video and essay (a NASA grant requirement although as a rookie team we are not eligible for the award). They also seemed to be impressed with the engineering and safety journal.

Harold, our robot, during one of our qualifying matches.

The matches began after the opening ceremonies and continued until around 6:00 PM. Out robot Harold had some technical difficulties in the first few rounds, but our crew has been able to identify and fix problems quickly. We performed very well in all the remaining matches Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. By the end of the qualifying matches we were ranked in 13th place, and were eventually selected by one of the eight alliance captains to compete in the final tournament matches. We made it as far as the semifinals, but lost the two matches to the opposing alliance. We weren't disappointed because we performed well, and the previous evening we were awarded the Rookie Inspiration Award!

View videos of our first FRC competition!

Bagged and Tagged!

The FRC official bag and tag day is Tuesday, February 19th. The students and mentors (especially our dedicated engineering mentor Neil Palachuk) have spent many long hours in the shop each weeknight, hoping to get the robot done by Friday the 15th. We needed more time, though, so many team members came in for about 8 hours on Sunday. Because we are a rookie team we decided to keep our design simple, focusing on the frisbee shooter, but we had a last minute inspiration and added a modification to lift the robot to the first rung of the pyramid. (For more about our challenge, please see the game video animation Ultimate Ascent.)

Our robot is highly maneuverable:

Our robot can shoot frisbees:

Our robot can reach the bottom rung:

Here is the Bag and Tag team on Sunday evening:

With well-earned high fives!

Go BEARbots!!

January is Mentor Appreciation Month!

We are almost halfway through the FRC build season, and we would not be making any progress at all without the enormous dedication of our team of mentors. Because we are a rookie team, our roster is relatively small, and not all team members can be here everyday. Many of our mentors are, though! Tondra Holeman and Neil Palachuk of Boeing have been with us since our robotics team was formed in September. They worked long hours to help us be competitive in our FTC competitions. During FTC we were joined by Francis Moreno, also a Boeing employee.

Now that we are in the FRC season, we have added Kyle Komo, Tom Newton and Michele Simon of Boeing, and Jesse Jarrell of Western Engineers. Our mentors are here as much or more than the students. Many give up time on the weekends to shop for needed materials and research information we need to know while we build the robots. They have an excellent rapport with the students, helping them to learn CAD, programming and manufacturing skills. We are very grateful for their support and we appreciate them all year long, not just in January!

Our fearless leaders, from left: Kyle Komo, Michelle Simon, Tom Newton, Neil Palachuk, Tondra Holeman, Jesse Jarrell.

Done with FTC, on to FRC!

Jeffrey and the BEAR Bots placed 11th out of 27 teams at the First Tech Challenge regional event last Sunday. It was an all-day extravaganza with many of us arriving before 7:00 AM and staying until after 6:00 PM. We are proud of what we accomplished in our first FTC regional, and it has given us the experience to do better when we start the First Robotics Competition build season in January. For more information about FTC and FRC, please visit the FIRST USA and FIRST Washington websites.

Reflections on Our Rookie Year

By Bryan

This is our first year in the First Robotics competition, and the entire team is incredibly excited and eager to do the best they can. This is a wonderful opportunity for everyone on the team to have an amazing experience building a robot and taking it to competitions. The mission of First USA Robotics is to inspire more young people to become science and technology leaders and give them a desire to become science and technology leaders.

As a rookie team we know we have a lot to learn about the intricacies of robotics. The team is dedicated to its goal and we feel that we can learn from and embrace the challenge of designing, programming and building a robot.

While the team is excited to build the robot and to compete, these things will not be possible without adequate funding, as building a robot, creating team uniforms, buying parts, and going to the competitions can be quite expensive. The good news though is that the team has already received a lot of support from the community and various organizations such as OSPI, NASA and Boeing. However, more assistance will be needed to cover the expenses of this program. One potential source of revenue that the team is looking into is the possibility of obtaining sponsorships from various organizations.

Overall the Cascade High School BEARbots is a young team that has exceeded expectations so far. We are eager, determined, and ready to compete. With the support of our mentors, our school, our sponsors and the community, the team is will continue to be competitive while practicing gracious professionalism, assisting other teams when and where we can. New mentors and sponsors are always needed, and those interested in supporting our team should contact Linda Anderson at Cascade High School.