It is Saturday morning as sophomore Ben Mohan slaps his ancient wood-covered clock to stop his alarm. He stares at the glaring red numbers reading 7 a.m. and gets up to head to the WFHS construction room where he will first eat a doughnut and then get to work for the next five hours as he does every Saturday.
For six weeks fabrication leader, Mohan, and the WFHS robotics team, “Zero Gravity,” have been completing the harsh task of designing and building a robot.
“It has been a difficult design process to go through, starting from scratch and seeing you have to build an object out of raw materials,” Bradley Mackowick, a new adviser of the robotics team, said.
Building a robot is challenging, but this is only one part of what middle and high school teams must do in order to do well in the national BEST [Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology] Robotics competition.
Other parts of the competition include a table display, engineering notebook and oral presentation. The local hub of the competition is called Bison BEST, which was the first competition for Mohan and the rest of Zero Gravity at NDSU Benson Bunker Field House Oct. 19-20. The team placed within the top seven overall, and will continue in the regional competition, also in Fargo. Additionally, the team got first place for their mascot and engineering notebook, and third in Computer Aided Design.
Mohan has been competing in BEST Robotics for four years and has been in the competition longer than even his mentor, Mackowick. Mackowick said Mohan is a calm leader who “takes things as they go.”
Mohan’s peers say he keeps them on task and is useful for the team, but having a sophomore as a leader does not go smoothly all the time. Some of his teammates say he can be quite confusing at times.
“I don’t know if it’s him being bossy or if it’s his facial expression when he talks, but it kinda makes me wanna freak out,” freshman Jon Dill said.
Mohan said it is stressful working with everyone as a leader and it is “hard when you want to work on the robot, but you have to summarize and take notes as well.”
Bison BEST has led to Mohan becoming more interested in engineering.
“It opens doors for me, seeing that I can do things other than the typical sports,” Mohan said. “Sports can be fun, but it is also fun to be able to compete with something other than physical activity.”
Within the robotics competition, members of the team drive their team’s robot to complete specific tasks tailored to the theme of the competition. This year’s theme is called WarpXX, which is based around getting humans and materials into space more efficiently using space elevators. Mohan says being on the field driving the robot is nerve-wracking, and you can never complete all the tasks you want to in just three minutes.
The main challenge for the robot this year is that it has to climb up a 10-foot pole, simultaneously carrying items.
”There are a lot of different challenges this year because last year you could just build a base and build the wheels and throw an arm on there and it would be alright. This year it’s all connected so you have to worry a lot about weight,” Mohan said. “You have to spend a lot of time brainstorming, but you have to start building stuff to see if ideas work.”
Mackowick understands that building the robot and participating in the competition is a great deal more work than most people think.
“It’s frustrating, a lot, but every once in a while you make a breakthrough and then it makes it worth it,” he said. “It’s kind of a lot of work for a little breakthrough here and there, but hopefully by competition we’ll have our robot done and ready to go.”