Area Robobots team takes third in national competition

For the second year in a row an area robotics team has earned third place in the National Robotics League Championship in Indianapolis.

“We never dreamed of finishing third or even in the top 10,” Tyler Gill, a member of Team Fabius at Cambridge Springs High School, said of doing so well at the national event.

Fabius, a robot from Cambridge Springs High School, and The Terminator, a robot from Conneaut Lake High School, both were sent to the 2012 National Robotics League double-elimination tournament by the northwest Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association.

The Terminator won the local NTMA chapter’s sixth annual northwest Pennsylvania tournament in March in Meadville, while Fabius placed second in the tournament.

Fabius battled its way to third place in the two-day national tournament held over the weekend, while the Conneaut Lake team ended up in the top half of the 36 teams competing, but didn’t advance to the second day.

“There were a lot of good robots. Not to sell ourselves short, but we didn’t think we’d get that high,” Gill said of Fabius’ finish.

The northwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association sponsors RoboBots, a hands-on robot-building contest for high school and middle school students. It was started in 2007 to create interest in technical education careers among high school and middle school students.

Students design and build 15-pound robots that do battle with each other in a double-elimination tournament.

However, the national tournament features both high school and college teams from around the country. This year, a total of 36 teams from 22 colleges and high schools competed.

Fabius was able to defeat the University of South Florida, the 2011 national champion, and Bloomsburg High School, which finished second in the 2011 national tournament. Bloomsburg was winner of the 2011 Meadville tournament.

“It was real exciting and surprising for us,” said Nate Eckstein, driver of Fabius.

While Gill and Eckstein operated the robot, other team members, Amber Festa, Alysia Walczak and Nathan Walczak, had key jobs not only in doing repairs but in scouting out the other robots in the national competition.

“We were trying to find out what their weaknesses were,” said Alysia Walczak.

“It was a lot of fun for everybody,” said Richard Gosnell, a physics and general science teacher at Cambridge Springs High School, who was the team’s coach. “The Conneaut Lake kids were supportive of the team, as was Bloomsburg.”