Since the expansion of the Physics Club to include a robotics club, and the school's first Botball award, in 1998, Tennyson has participated in Botball and emerged victorious, winning awards in each tournament entered.

To this day, the Tennyson High Robotics Club is the only organization at Tennyson HS that competes and wins at a national level.

Since the creation of the robotics club, we have had many talented students make use of the real-life engineering experiences and opportunities given by Botball program.  One of our proudest statistics of our history is the fact that every single THS Robotics Club alumni has successfully moved on to a 4-year university and each one is majoring in engineering or architecture!  The three seniors in the club are well on their way to the engineering college of their choice – but most importantly, they will be prepared for it.  Since they entered the club, they have found the basics of Botball, working brilliantly to further their understanding of Physics, Calculus, Statistics, programming, web-design, and overall, the skills of a strategist.  Every member, old and new, going through the Botball program finds use of all these progressions. 

Really the best description of us is engineering hopefuls.  We dream of one day working at that job for NASA or Boeing; and, we want to explore every early aspect of becoming that engineer so that they can easily enter college and explore every advanced aspect of becoming that engineer.  In high school, we have this advantage: THS Robotics.  In turn, THS Robotics has this advantage: Botball. 

Two robotics victories in a week!  Two more for the collection!

By Damon Lau

            On Monday February 23^rd, the winners for the National Research and Design websites were announced, and four days later, on Friday, February 27, the Tennyson High Robotics Club went to the Robot Sumo Tournament at SFSU.  At the end of the week, all of us were elated knowing that we had won 2^nd place in the nation for the research and design website and 1^st place for the robot sumo tournament!

             “How do you guys feel? cuz I feel good after this,” boasted junior David Lin after leading the team to the top prize at the SFSU robotics tournament while collecting a $300 prize and a beautiful, shiny plaque.  Our robot (once again named El Chocolo) swept onto the sumo ring and won a total of 8 matches while loosing only one match the entire tournament.  This competition was attended by the top students of 11 Bay Area high schools, and even one team form San Francisco State University.  Other schools included Lowell, and Thurgood Marshal, San Mateo High, etc.   “Well, we can either go through this competition taking what they give us and just know that we are doing the absolute best we can, or we can say, ‘this is what we got, now, lets win!’  Which mindset do you think we took?” asked senior Mathew Troncao.

            The victory actually came as a surprise to the team after watching their main robot’s brain get burned out.  Our PIC16F876 chip, having experienced numerous malfunctions during the building process, finally gave out the day before the competition!  Thus, the team was left with building a new robot from scratch with less than 24 hours to the competition.  The team was left to building with a more primitive processor, the RCX 1.0, and presented with the formidable task of trying to reshape the shell of the processor to fit the size constraints.  An RCX battery pack distributed the weight of the robot evenly rather than directly above the axels.  Fixing that dilemma required carefully soldering and rewiring a new, more compact battery pack to be placed right where it needs to be for maximum down force and traction.  The most daunting task the team faced in that night of frantic robot construction was the programming of the machine.  An RCX 1.0 reads a programming language called C or IC 1.4.30.  The eyes of the robot were two cadmium sulfide light sensors and the software code was its guide.  But needless to say, it is universally understood that robots don’t like to obey humans.   It took many program revisions and hours of staring at a disobedient robot to finally get El Chocolo to do what the team captain wanted.  In the end, it turned out to be a flipped greater than or equal to sign in the software code that caused the problems – while(1){ if ( analog(1) <= fhitrip ) { motor(A, -speed / 8);motor(B, speed);}if ( analog(2) && analog (1) <= avg ) { beep();}…}.

             For seven hours, the three veteran members, David Lin, Mathew Troncao, and myself, furiously worked and reworked pounded away at this robot.  At 2am, the robot was complete, and ready for battle.  “After winning the first match, I was euphoric and just simply relieved that our last minute effort paid off, worked better than a last minute effort,” said  Troncao.  The carefully written program, the proper weight distribution of the robot, and delicately crafted steel ram gave Tennyson the clear advantage.  El Chocolo’s overpowering torque and speed could not be matched.   

            The first place finish had a $300 prize, and out split between the three senior members and divided by the seven hours we worked on the robot comes out to about $15 and hour.  “This makes a very, very nice high school job,” remarked Lin. 

            The Tennyson Robotics Club will be attending the Robolympics competing against not only the high schools, but also, professional roboticists March 20.  For that competition, the team will be partaking in the 3kg Sumo and the 500g MINI Sumo Robot tournaments.  Since the opposition for those events will certainly be more skilled than the already formidable opposition in the high school tournaments, the team has already made designs for a robot 5 times the mass of El Chocolo, and 6 times the strength.  In fact, advisor George Moore has already ordered a pair of mega servomotors with 343 oz.-in of torque with $116 of our $300 dollar prize money.  “The payout for the March 20 events will be $2,100!  If we could win these tournaments, for one thing, we will win Tennyson Robotics the prestige of beating the top professional roboticists in the country, we will make slightly more than $15 and hour, and we will have almost all of NASA Ames Botball registration fee covered for next year,” noted Lin.  The club currently relies on grants and donations from business and faculty to exist. 

            “From the walking stick to the stick walking…and now the stick thinking.”  That was the title of our prize wining research and design website.  Unlike El Chocolo, this project was not a last minute effort.  It was a 6 page research paper on Assistive Robotics in Alzheimer’s patients.  This paper included an article by freshmen Amanda Sherman titled, “Intel and other companies introduce "smart" technology that can be embedded in homes of Alzheimer's patients,” which clearly went a long way in convincing the judges that Tennyson Robotics’ research paper deserved the prize.  The website/research paper bested 31 high schools from around the nation and won the club a $500 travel grant to the National Botball Robotics Education Conference.

            One of the most valued traditions held in the six years of the existence of the robotics club is the fact that it is the students that do the work.  In every event that the Tennyson Robotics Club enters, Advisor George Moore says, “Look around.  Every other high school team has at its center, the adult mentor.  Those students have to rely on him or her to succeed here.  Now look at you guys.  You are working as a team of students – not a team of students and teacher.  Everything is built and programmed independently by the students.  That is the way it should be.”

Tennyson places 3^rd  in Botball Symposium

By Mark Solomon

            On Thursday night, November 13, the Tennyson High School Robotics Club placed third in a competition of robotics teams around the Bay Area. The exhibition, which took place at Moffet Field, consisted of 10 competing teams, including the neighboring San Leandro High School.

                Botball, the name of the competition, is participated in nationally. The Tennyson Robotics Team, headed by physics teacher Mr. Moore, has competed in it every year since 1998, and since then has emerged victorious, winning awards in each tournament entered.

Robots are built with LEGOÓ building blocks, and are programmed using the computer language C. Team members build the robots from scratch, and use C to program the robot to perform. The hands on experience and real-life technical objectives of Botball give members a chance to learn far more about engineering than textbook data.

“I don’t help them out at all. Everything is built and programmed independently by the students,”  club advisor, Mr. Moore, remarks, “I’m just a mediator.”

                Tennyson’s main robot, namely “El Choclo,” swept onto the Botball arena, winning its first match decisively against the intimidating Los Altos Community Team, whose robots outnumbered and outsized Tennyson’s. The swiftness of Tennyson’s robot easily beat Los Altos, with a score of 9-0.

                 “It’s a great feeling knowing that something you’ve worked on for so long is finally doing everything right.” said Mathew Troncao, senior, after the end of the first round of the tournament.

                The next round of the tournament also proved to be victorious for Tennyson, winning 15-3 over the neighboring San Leandro Pirates. The win turned out to be an upset, with both the crowd and the announcers’ in favor of the Pirates over Tennyson. 

                Although the team was not able to grab a win in the next round, the game was close with Tennyson losing by only 3 points. Tennyson still finished the tournament with the third place spot.

                “There’s always room for improvement,” commented Damon Lau, senior, “that’s why our job is never done.”

                The robotics team, though smaller than usual, has a tough yet optimistic year ahead of them. Fundraising efforts need to be taken in order for the team to participate in next spring’s  regional tournament, which will determine participation in the national tournament in the summer, something its members are sure going to happen next year.