Saint Joseph CHS students take robotics project to national championship

Friday, Jun. 05, 2015

OGDEN — Robotics events and competitions are gaining popularity throughout the United States, so when four Saint Joseph Catholic High School students were approached last year to join a league to build robots, they accepted the challenge. 

SJCHS juniors Robert Joseph and Sean Letendre and senior Phat Bui, and Grant Leland from Saint Joseph Elementary School, built a robot that fights other robots and won second place in a regional competition among five other schools. 

The region competition was held at Weber High School in Ogden, where the students’ battlebot was built. As a result of the competition, the team qualified for a National Robotics League competition held May 15-16 at Grayson College in Cleveland, Ohio.

“This group of young men is awesome,” said Joanna Wheelton, president of Saint Joseph Catholic schools. “They dedicated their Saturdays for an entire year to design, build and perfect their robot. It was truly a group effort, with each one participating. Watching them head off to Ohio to participate in nationals was so exciting; we loved cheering them on.”

At the national competition, the SJCHS team competed against college students and went out in the first round, said Patrick Lambert SJCHS principal. “There were teams from all over the country that were representing a number of colleges and high schools. We are really proud of our boys; they did such a great job of creating this team, they were excited about it and it was totally student driven. Between competitions they had to weld, fix and rewire the robot; it was as hands on as you can get. They represented us well. They had to figure out how to make it as destructive as possible.”

To build the battlebot – which the team named Robo Cop – they worked with Reid Leland, who operates Lean Werks, and also with Anthony Lyons, a technical advisor for Lean Werks. 

The robot was 12 inches by 12 inches and 3 inches tall. It weighs about 15 pounds, which was the only requirement.  

Robo Cop runs on two 14-volt batteries and has a weapon that can spin at about 12,000 rpm.

 “The robots have giant saws or spinning blades on them that try to destroy the other robots,” said Joseph, who with his teammates went to Lean Werks once or twice a week to practice with Robo Cop. 

Going into the project the students did not have any engineering experience, so for the first half of the year they met with the technical advisor to take classes to learn about different electronic and mechanical components “anything that we would need; there was definitely a lot to learn, but I feel like I got a good education from it,” Joseph said. “We also did a lot of research and learned a lot about engineering and documentation.”

After each match in competition, the robots need repairs. 

“There are multiple rounds of combat so you have to be able to build a robot that is not only going to be able to destroy the other robots, but you have to repair the damage done to your robot,” said Joseph. “It was a good and fun experience.” 

“It was good to learn how to start an engineering project and learn about engineering while we are in high school,” added Letendre.