GULF BREEZE, FL— Robotics is in full swing at Gulf Breeze High School. This is GBHS’ first in six years to compete in the BEST Robotics competition hosted by the University of West Florida. GBHS will compete against 23 other Northwest Florida middle and high schools, including public schools, private academies and other magnet schools.
BEST is a rigorous competition in which students are engaged in engineering, science and technology (STEM) as well as business. The competition involves teams marketing themselves as a business which has launched a new product, the robot, in order to satisfy the game rules and competition objectives. In addition to designing, programming and building the robot, the teams must also design a display booth, which functions similarly to how a store would show off the product; conduct a marketing presentation in which team members “pitch” the product to potential customers and investors by explaining the operations of their business through a digital presentation and by using visual aids; build a fully-functioning, public website; complete one-on-one impromptu interviews with judges; and provide technical documentation of all of the operations and fine details of the team and its operations.
Students are extremely dedicated and work extremely hard in the 42-day period allotted to them in order to successfully compete. The team’s head press and marketing director, Thomas Colangelo, recognizes and experiences first-hand the extreme stress and pressure that these students are experiencing. “Every single one of my teammates is extremely smart and intelligent, and we want to succeed. We all put a lot of time and dedication into what we do. We really do it with a passion. Not only do we in high school have a number of extracurricular activities in which we participate, most of the club members, myself included, are in honors or AP classes and are constantly swamped with school work on top of robotics club and other commitments,” Colangelo says. “We take the time out of our weekend to come up to school to work for eight hours on robotics every Saturday, but we really enjoy it, and it’s good to see all of our hard work pay off.”
First-time robotics team member Sheila Simpson added that members of every department have had their fair share of ups and downs. “We have had a few problems starting out, [with] this being our first year having a robotics club in the high school for some time, but it is great to be able to tackle a problem and combine ideas [from] different people to make something wonderful,” Simpson said of the team’s dynamic. “ When a bunch of busy high school students sacrifice this much time on something rather than studying, we mean business,” she said, meaning that there is a certain level of commitment shared by all members of the team. Simpson has worked on the booth right from the get-go in order to allow the team to succeed in their marketing efforts.
And while the exact design of the robot and the team’s strategy is not to be released until game day, sophomore John Michael Huggins did say that the team was very methodical and organized in their approach, actively taking notes and holding discussions over important issues. Huggins, who has participated in BEST robotics since he was in middle school, said: “We really use the engineering process for this competition and preparation. The first thing we did was dissect the information on the game. Once we understood the game rules. We needed to come up with a strategy for the maximum amount of points in our time period.” He also mentioned how important safety was to the team, and that safe tool-handling techniques were in place and that each member of the team was thoroughly briefed on safety, whether they were using power tools or not. In addition, Huggins mentioned the importance of teamwork in order to practice safe conditions.
Teamwork is not only important for the individuals using power tools and building the robot, but also for those programming the robot. Programming director Richard Musca said, “Our programming team is made up of several people who bounce ideas off of each other. While only a few of us actually typed, everyone gave input on how to layout controls, format code, and what commands are to be used when telling the robot to do a certain task. Programming is a crucial part of the robotics team since, without it, the robot will not be able to do anything.”
Alex Esenwein, who also participated in programming the robot, told us that while programming is a healthy challenge, it was not the daunting task that he thought it would be, and encouraged others to get involved with a robotics team if programming and coding is what they are interested in. “The programming aspect of the robot is surprisingly easy. It only took me an hour to learn how to program a test robot to move exactly the way I wanted it. The hardest part about it is trying to assign multiple functions to the different buttons without them conflicting. I was expecting to have to write hundreds of lines of code, but surprisingly, it only takes 50 or so,” Esenwein stated.
Cindy Gulley, the team’s faculty advisor and club director, told us about the learning process that she has gone through, and how she has benefited by heading up the Gulf Breeze High School robotics club. “As an educator, observing the experiences and the growth through trial and error of this new team is quite fulfilling. The students have done an excellent job working together to merge individual ideas to solidify a competitive team robot and marketing plan. I love that the BEST competition demonstrates the importance of diverse student talents in science, technology, engineering, math and also business, art and other creative areas,” Mrs. Gulley states.
The competition will be held at the University of West Florida field house, from 9 AM to 4 PM, Saturday, October 29th.
