"The learning curve was enormous for the students and myself." Tom Ciferno
Neither Chardon High School science teacher Tom Ciferno nor the students under him knew anything about building small robots before last fall.
Yet, despite being novices, with a crash course in remotely-controlled robots, imagination and lots of engineering help and encouragement, the 14-member high school robotics team won fourth place out of more than two dozen teams at an April 26 regional robotics competition at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland.
The team’s great inaugural showing was recognized at a May school board meeting by Superintendent Michael Hanlon, who last October, asked high school Principal Andy Fetchik to find a science teacher to organize and coach a robotics team, Ciferno said.
Chardon resident Steve Sanders, president of Habco Tool & Development in Mentor, and Cole and Cara Coe, operators of HI TecMetal Group, invited Hanlon to form a team.
The firms belong to the Alliance for Working Together, a Northeast Ohio foundation that promotes careers in manufacturing and sponsors the annual robotics competition, Ciferno said.
Ciferno said he was surprised, but delighted by the response to flyers posted in the high school about the making of combative robots for the AWT RoboBot contest.
The trouble was, despite his 26-years as a science teacher, Ciferno confessed he knew little about making robobots, especially those designed to eliminate others in a duel to the finish.
“The learning curve was enormous for the students and myself,” said Ciferno. “By most standards, it was a late start for us because most of the other teams had already been established in other schools.”
The science teacher never tallied the hours he and students spent planning and building their robot, although they met Tuesdays and Thursdays after school for two hours from early November until the late April competition.
First came several weeks of conceptual planning on the design of the flat, wheel-driven robobot.
It had to be capable of taking a beating, while inflicting critical damage on those of competing high school teams from Lake, Geauga and eastern Cuyahoga counties.
There were several specifications, such as no robobot could be heavier than 15 pounds and each had to be built to withstand punishment, Ciferno said.
The initial concept for the robot was complex. Ciferno described the armored titanium encasing built around the hi-tech, inter-workings as looking “something like a rotor out of a Mazda rotary engine.”
Then came disappointment from Habco.
“They basically said it was a great idea, but given the time left before the competition, the engineers said they couldn’t manufacture it,” Ciferno said. “We had basically spent a lot of hours on something that couldn’t be built, so it was back to the drawing board — quickly.”
After some brainstorming, the team went back to another initial idea — an outer titanium armored shell looking like a rectangle with stealthy sloped sides.
Habco engineers gave the design a thumbs up and set out to manufacture the robobot, which student teams named “Sticker.”
On April 26, the community college gym looked like a mini-Star Wars battle coliseum filled with robobots, their teams and spectators who watched the small, metal gladiators do battle.
The robobots battled in a double-elimination tournament to see who would be the victor in three-minute battles, Ciferno said.
“Sticker” won three straight battles and was one battle away from winning third place when it couldn’t recover from prior battle damage and lost a second time after a half-inch steel drive rod broke in half.
“What really hurt us was the welds on our titanium armor broke in a prior battle and, when that happened, we had to substitute aluminum armor, which just got shredded in that last battle,” Ciferno said. “Everybody was disappointed, but fourth place was a terrific first showing and next year, we’ll do better.”
Among the team members were sister and brother Samantha and Seth Austin, who respectively become a senior and a sophomore in September.
“Robotics was a great way to get involved and learn modern machining techniques by getting hands on,” said Samantha. “Our amazing sponsors, Habco Tool and HI TechMetal Group, not only explained to us the machining process, but allowed us to go ‘behind the scenes’ and use the machines to build some of the parts that were used on the ‘bot’.”
Seth added, “I thought it would be awesome and a great opportunity to build a robot and learn to program and machine it.”
Teams members also included graduated seniors Justin Baker, Robert Bukovec, Toni DeMarti, Zac Ewaska, Trace Faulkner, Brett Flesher, Matt Stark, Larry King, Ryan McDivitt, Grant Mlack, Matt Morrisette and Timothy and Gridley Ibold.
“This was a real eye-opening experience for them because some of them are going off to become engineers,” said Ciferno, who explained the robot experience exposed students to careers opportunities in manufacturing they don’t learn about in school.
