Ronan Roboteers

RONAN — A 144-square foot rubber-bottomed ‘field’ fills half of coach Jesse Gray’s computer lab in Ronan High School. Trays filled with sprockets, chains and wires line the walls. In the center, two knee-high machines battle.

This is robot practice.

Ronan High School’s robotics club, SD30, is gearing up for the First Tech Challenge state championship Friday at Montana State University. The club’s upper-class and frosh teams have spent the past five months designing, building and testing their respective robots. They’re preparing for this contest’s specific challenge of placing plastic rings on elevated PVC racks. If either team can outrace their opponents in Bozeman, they’ll make a return trip to the world championship in St. Louis.

“I love competing,” says Tyler Sassaman, a five-year robtics veteran and president of the club. “It’s a rush.”

Sassaman and his teammate J.T. Probst were a part of Ronan’s 2011 world champion team. They placed highly in this year’s qualifiers in Butte and Belgrade, competitions that have given them an edge in perfecting their robot, which they simply named no. 178.

The teammates operate Robot 178’s movement and arm operation simultaneously via wireless Sony Playstation-style controllers. They have more than eight years of experience between them, and it shows in practice.

Coach Gray says students spend as many as 20 hours a week tweaking components and preparing for contests. While Gray provides the parts and takes care of competition details, his job is fairly “hands-off”.

“It’s not for me to tell them how to build it,” he says. Students are given free-reign in every phase of construction, and document everything in an engineering notebook, which is required for competition. Even the notebook is complex—with a machine-mitered wood cover and more than 100 pages of designs, photos and schematics.

This year’s modifications for no. 178 include a faster sliding drawer arm and doubled-up wheels for better traction.

“They’re going to do really well,” Gray says.

SD30 members not involved in competition help out with designing, building, and documenting construction, as well as scouting other teams at contests. They record video to study competitors’ strengths and weaknesses; it’s a valuable strategy when it comes to choosing alliances near the end of tournaments.

Aside from April’s world championship, SD30 will compete in a tournament hosted by the Vex robotics company in March. Instead of rings, the Vex tournament involves lifting bean bags, which requires a new robot design from scratch.

The number of high school robotics teams has roughly tripled in Montana since 2004. SD30 will compete with as many as 36 teams at the state tournament, and 128 at the world championships.