McKenzie Robotics Team Claims ‘Champion’ Status

By lauragates on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Filed Under: Local People, School News

This year, Lawrence Township boasts one of the most successful teams in school history, and it has nothing to do with sports!

The McKenzie Robotics team capped off their most successful season on record with a division win at the National Championships last month, ranking our hometown team in the top 99 percent of all FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics teams worldwide.

The Kil-a-Bytes capped off the season with a division win, earning them a spot in the final “Einstein” field — a distinction reserved for only 12 of the 340 teams competing from the U.S., Israel, Holland, France, Mexico, Canada and Brazil.

Their recent win at Championships follows three straight wins at regional competitions, where the Kil-a-Bytes set the “high score” and captured several awards for their robot’s fabrication, attractiveness and functionality. There have only been three other teams in the history of FIRST Robotics to win all three of their regionals!

The Kil-a-Bytes tied a FIRST record for the number of awards received by a single team in one year, and the McKenzie Career Center has tripled the number of banners hanging in its front hallway.

Aside from winning the Archimedes Division at World Championships, the Kil-a-Bytes also took home the event’s highest honor, the Rockwell Automation Award, recognizing the robot’s innovative control system.

This was especially significant to Geist resident Alex Suchko, a Cathedral High School senior who wrote the software program which controls the robot. He served as the robot’s “driver” at competitions.

“Thanks to FIRST robotics, I’m going into college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with previous experience in engineering, something very few incoming freshmen can say,” said Alex, who plans to pursue electrical engineering and continue studying control theory.

Alex joined the Kil-a-Bytes in 2006, along with his dad, Adam, who is a team mentor from Engineering Concepts Unlimited. Adam’s favorite part of the experience was watching these high school kids adeptly solve problems as they came up in competitions. That was the responsibility of another Geist resident, Mark Ziemba, who was on the team’s “pit crew.”

“Things go wrong, and they find out how to make it right,” Adam Suchko says with admiration. “In the end, it comes out where everything is running perfect.”

Here’s a video description of the “game” students designed their robot to play:

To view the Kil-a-Bytes’ matches at nationals, go to www.thebluealliance.net and enter team #1024. For more information on FIRST Robotics, visit www.usfirst.org.

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