Robotics rebuilds for a new year

September 19, 2014 — by Aditya Chaudhry and David Fan

After losing valuable members who graduated last year, M-SET hopes to bounce back with the help of new officers and summer training. Students in May of last year elected junior Naveed Riaziat as president to lead the changes.

After losing valuable members who graduated last year, M-SET hopes to bounce back with the help of new officers and summer training. Students in May of last year elected junior Naveed Riaziat as president to lead the changes.

One key change has been the structure of officer positions in the club, which now has a whole “cabinet of officers” as opposed to one president and three vice presidents. These officers include juniors Navid Mokhlesi (head of hardware), Diana Kat (head of TARC and Tech Challenge), Elizabeth Li (head of electronics), Kabir Manghnani (head of software) and Aditya Chaudhry (head of Marketing) and sophomores Nicole Lin (head of outreach), Aaron Ngai (head of FTC), Rachel Won (head of finance) and Samay Garg (head of safety and administration).

Another big change has been the team’s loss of valuable seniors who were key in programs that ranged from TARC (Teen America Rocketry Competition) to FRC (First Robotics Competition).

“The loss of a number of highly skilled seniors has left a vacuum in almost all of our subteams,” Mokhlesi said. “From software to hardware and electronics, we are missing much needed leadership, experience and ingenuity that the seniors had.”

So far, the team has spent time over the summer developing the necessary skills to garner knowledge and creativity from last year’s members. The team focused on trying to simulate an actual FRC (First Robotics Competition) season to help better understand the nature of the competition.

“The summer training has been a very good learning experience for both the newer members and the sub team leaders, who learned what areas they needed to work on,” Mokhlesi said.

Not only did they want to improve the experience of veteran members, but the team also laid out introductory workshops for their FTC (First Tech Challenge) teams, which are popular with the newer members of the club. The workshops allowed new members to build an FTC robot and compete in simulation competitions at school.

“[The workshops] helped the new members get used to what was going to happen during the course of the season, so they weren’t jumping into the challenge without any experience at all,”  said sophomore FTC member Simrun Buttar, a veteran FTC member..

To further enhance experience of newcomers, M-SET took a handful of students on Sept. 6 to the Play Space in San Jose for the FTC (First Tech Challenge) game reveal. The event featured multiple workshops for the new members and made public this year’s challenge. This year’s FTC game is called the cascade effect, where players will have to use their robots to move Wiffle Balls into cylindrical tubes.

“The game reveal was amazing; everyone was holding their breath around us to see what it was going to be,” Buttar said. “All the teams from around the Bay Area seemed excited and motivated for the challenge.”

The club is heading for another great season and hopes to recover from their losses stronger than ever.

“The incoming class has so far been strong and our veterans have learned so much this summer and are ready to teach and apply what they know to make our best season yet,” Riaziat said.

The club’s first competition is CalGames at Woodside High School on Oct. 3-4. The team will replay last year’s FRC challenge called Aerial Assist. The goal of the game is to pass a 2-foot yoga ball between two randomly selected robots and score it into a 10-foot high goal.

After the event, the club will focus on helping new members become facilitated inside the club.

“Our goal is to make sure that our members are trained and able; we want anyone interested to be able to find a place in the club where they can learn and have fun,” Riaziat said.

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