After school on October 10, 2012, the robot “Close Enough” from Blaine High School’s Team 2181’s 2011/12 FRC Robotics season was wheeled into the carpentry room to show the new coming members of the team what a robot might look like.

Advisor Tim Nestrud explained to the newcomers what the program is about: cooperation, competition, innovation and engineering.

Every year, shortly after winter break, FRC (the organization behind the nation wide robotics programs) hosts a “Kick-Off”. At the “Kick-Off” teams from around the state gather to see what they will be building for during the next build season. FRC will make a game for schools to build robots to compete in.

For the 2011/12 season, the game was a variation of basketball. There were two teams of three school’s robots, four hoops, and multiple balls. The teams were to design a robot that could pick up and/or get balls into the hoops. The robots were only allowed to pickup three balls at a time and were penalized if they grabbed more.

For a final catch, FRC added a challenge objective: balance on a seesaw type bridge with your robot. Completing the challenge objective earns points, but cooperating with your team or an opposing team yielded as much as a tripled bonus.

The build season of the previous year was hectic, and the robot was barely finished. “The robot really was just ‘close enough’,” said Nestrud.

One of three captains of the team, Jaycen Bruce (11), was asked what he enjoys so much about the robotics program, and it was ” the innovation, the creativity, the diversity, and the uniqueness of it all,” he said.

Raymond Himle (12), another captain  and the head electrician, participates in the program “because they need me and no one else can do what i do,” he said.  The other two captains, Bruce and Andy Nelson (12), agree. According to Bruce, “without Ray we’d be screwed. No one else on the team knows electrical the way he does.”

At the opening meeting, Nestrud asked people to register into the different work categories for the program: programming, electrical, drive-train, rules and regulations, and challenge objectives. Bruce explained the breakdown of the most critical groups working on the robot. “The robot is comprised of three main categories, programming, electrical, and body. All three are extremely important because the robot can’t run if even one is missing.

“The body of the robot is comprised of the chassis, drive-train  and any extras added for the game, but none of it will work if it isn’t both wired and programmed,” said Nestrud.

“As programming, we are pretty important. Without us we have a wired robot but no way of making it do anything. It is a pain to have to work alongside the build team because we can’t run any program tests until after the robot is finished and wired,” said head programmer Aaron Fonseca (11).

The returning members of the 2011/12 team began thinking of new designs for the robot on that day, when they have no idea what to expect for the game.

Himle is a senior, so “next year will be tough without Ray, his two assistants don’t know half the stuff he does. At the very least he left us his magnificent electrical box of awesomeness so that we have a base wiring system for a few years to come,” said Bruce.  By the end of the day, “Close Enough” laid in pieces on the cart, but thanks to  reliable members, early planning, and fresh blood, Team 2181 has started.