Lakeview Academy’s Robotics Team is one of four teams in the state that have qualified for the FIRST Robotics World Championship this April.
For the last six years, the Galactic Lions have advanced to the state-level competition, but this will be the team's first time making the trip to the World Championship in Houston, Texas.
AccessWDUN recently spoke to Lakeview Academy’s Technology Director and Galactic Lions robotics team Head Coach Mikhail Lovell, who says the journey to the top has been a long time coming.
“I've been with the school for eight years now,” Lovell said. “And, back then we were just putting robots together and going to competitions, and it's taken a while to improve not only our process, but our presentation skills and all that goes into being one of the top teams in the state and in the country.”
The FIRST Robotics Competition allows high school students to collaborate in problem-solving challenges by building robots over a six-week period. The Galactic Lions specifically compete in the category of FIRST Tech Challenge, which presents each team with a common challenge and prompts them to design a robot that fits within the parameters of the challenge.
This year’s challenge revolved around energy.
“We're actually kind of creating a pseudo circuit on the field with little plastic cones," Lovell explains. “There's little depots of plastic cones that our robot has to go up and grab and maneuver. Then, they are placed among poles and little junctions on the field. We compete with a partner robot in a match against two other robots. It's really almost a BattleBots style competition, to get the most cones onto the field correctly, and to create a circuit in the end.”
Lovell also explained that the team made improvements to the robot after each competition based on its performance.
At the state competition, the team was given two awards that solidified their place in the World Competition.
The team was awarded the Innovate Award for its innovative and creative robotic design. However, Lovell highlighted that the Galactic Lions always aim to receive the Inspire Award.
“The Inspire award is more important than building the best robot on the field,” he said. “ It’s about being an outstanding team in all respects, from outreach about FIRST, to community service, to leading robot camps, to sharing our robots at the Christmas on Green Street parade and more.”
The team did meet the requirements to receive the Inspire Award but ultimately, it was their sportsmanship during the competition that caught the judges' attention.
During the state competition, the team noticed that a Macon team’s bot had a broken part.
“Without this specific part, their robot literally could not have run,” Lovell explained. “And so, we actually had an extra part on us and we literally just gave it to them.”
Lovell said that the Inspire award is highly valued in the FIRST community because teams who receive it are considered to best showcase the competition’s values of gracious professionalism and cooperation.
The Galactic Lions will be competing against 400 teams at the international level next month.
“It's a big deal to get to the World Championship in general,” he said. “But it's, it's a really big deal for our school, our team, our community, because we don't have much representation in the robotics community, say in Hall County, or Gainesville, or North Georgia. And so, it's really good to try and get out there and say that, yes, we have these amazing kids doing this amazing thing, and we're successful at it, and we have these opportunities for students around our region and in our local community, and they can get involved.”
