Titanium Titans’ robot ‘Perses’ competing at Cal U.
Team members hoist their plastic-wrapped robot, which was sealed with a dated tag so no alterations could be made until this week’s competitions.
Two of the three girls on the 13-member team were present Wednesday as Megan Black, 16, left, and Sydney Clausser, 16, prep “business” aspects for their team for final presentations.
Examples of the types of obstacles the team will encounter at California University
The 2016 Titanium Titans team
Greg Robertson, his son, Adam, 14, and Megan Black, 16, finish stapling their team colors and covers on the bumpers that will surround “Perses.”
A screenshot of Perses from the team’s field test video, available online at or.news.
Stephen Patrick, 17, stands with the past two years’ robots: Prometheus and Gaia, which continued the Titans’ Greek mythology naming tradition.
EIGHTY FOUR – The Canonsburg-based robotics team “The Titanium Titans” almost didn’t build a robot for this year’s battery of competitions.
The team suffered through the tumult of losing its nonprofit status, parent mentors and original build space. After the former coach’s son graduated, she withdrew from the team, leaving a leadership vacuum. But Tom Wilk and nine other parents have stepped up and managed to field a 13-student team and a bot in time for this week’s three-day competition starting today at California University. The team said because of of this year’s challenges, they’ve built their leanest and meanest robot yet: Perses.
“We named it Perses, as we have named every robot a Greek Titan, keeping with our team theme. The last two years’ robots were Gaia and Prometheus,” said Stephen Patrick, 17, an alternate pilot and build team member in his third year with the Titans.
George Dodworth, owner of Lightwave International in Eighty Four, opened up his warehouses to the team after Wilk learned that space at Western Area Career & Technology Center would no longer be available for them. The team met for interviews Tuesday as they packed up Perses and prepared last-minute strategy – and told of how close they came to dissolving.
“We had to form our own nonprofit in November so we could fundraise and get sponsors. We’re hoping to scrape by with about $10,000 this year, but a good year yields around $30,000. A team really should get started in the summer, so we only had a couple of months before the January reveal of this year’s challenge: the ‘Stronghold’ course. Then we had six weeks to build a robot specifically for this course,” said Wilk, whose son, Thomas, is on the team.
The “FIRST Greater Pittsburgh Regional” robotics competition has 52 teams from Pennsylvania and West Virginia convening at California University’s convocation center to battle in three-versus-three “alliance” matches wherein the winning teams score the most points by passing over and under hurdles and netting goals in a medieval-themed obstacle course that takes up half a basketball court. This year’s short notice and lack of resources had the team tearing off parts of Gaia and Prometheus to make it in time.
“We’re very confident in this year’s product. Earlier scrimmages showed our bot doing well while other teams’ mechanisms failed. We kept things simple, had to recycle parts. And we have components able to solve several problems on the obstacle course. One failsafe is our shooter mechanism, which is separate from the chassis. We can still put balls in the towers if it fails with different lifts that can place the balls at different angles.The shooter, itself, intakes balls with two vertical wheels, then they reverse and shoot the ball out off of a ramp,” Patrick said.
Despite Perses being the Greek Titan of destruction, the aim in competitions is not to divide and conquer, but to “compete with class,” Patrick said.
“We actually have a political team, which is a sub-team of our strategy and scouting teams. They go down into the pits where bots get repairs after matches. They try to help build rapport with competitors who may become good teammates. So you offer to help them with repairs or offer insights, and you try to build relationships even though you’re competitors. Your team can get picked by a good team or you might need to pick a good team. If you mess up a robot, it could be your teammate next round,” Patrick said.
He explained most teams also have scouts in the stands watching every robot and sending real-time strategy down to the pilot. Patrick, an alternate pilot, said a good driver isn’t too aggressive.
“You don’t want to push it too much in the beginning; keep it together until the end. If given the chance for risky points, I’d rather save the bot for later in the match and later matches,” Patrick said.
If the Titanium Titans win the competition, they would catapult to the national championships in St. Louis, Mo., April 27-30. But the team hasn’t forgotten it’s about learning and collaborating in an electronic sport that could literally build their way to a career in engineering.
“It’s a really open, collaborative community,” Patrick said, “so you’re not worried too much about backstabbing or dirty play. We’re not out there trying to purposefully destroy a robot. They’ve put blood, sweat and tears into this just like we did.”