On the weekend of November 1st, the Milken Knights, Milken’s robotics team, competed in an off-season competition called “Beach Blitz”, held by FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). The competition’s theme was “Reefscape,” centered on the ocean. The goal of the competition was to move coral (PVC pipes) onto three different heights of angled poles, and move algae (rubber bouncy balls) onto elevated nets. At the end of each round, the robots were tasked with grasping onto a cage that would lift them up.
The Milken Knights, led by their captain Ilan Zakai ‘28, spent many hours nearly every day over the past few months ensuring their robot was ready for competition.
Head Coach Bruce Dominguez said, “The Robotics Team is largely a student-run organization. As coach, the idea is to balance my guidance and direction and give the students autonomy to build the robot themselves.”
The Milken Knights began building the robot in early September. The robot’s conception and ideation took inspiration from another school’s robot that performed successfully in last year’s competition. Its job was to launch PVC pipes onto three different heights of angled poles.
In the final week of construction, the Milken Knights realized that their robot would not be finished in time for the competition, which led to them to decide to use last year’s robot. However, this robot was partially taken apart, so the team had to reconstruct it within only a week before “Beach Blitz” began.
“We were hyper focused on an incredible goal of trying to build a new and operational robot from scratch,” said Coach Bruce. Unfortunately, “we just lost our sense of time in preparation for the competition.”
The old robot worked differently from the new one. It used an elevator-like system to lift the pipes instead of launching them. The team had two nights to work on the old robot, and they didn’t waste a second of it. Meetings were held until 8:00 pm at the Guerin for people who could stay that late. This ensured that the robot would be done in time.
On Friday, October 31st, at Capo Valley High School, “Beach Blitz” commenced. Despite their hard work, the Milken Knights placed 41st out of 42 teams.
That said, Coach Bruce deemed it to be a powerful learning experience.
“We’ll have a more mature team next season.” Coach Bruce. “So we’ll have a better understanding of what the roles are and needs are during the competition.”