After months of collaboration with school administrators, Burlingame’s robotics team, the Iron Panthers, has landed its own on-campus practice space. Just in time for on-season, the team has begun using a newly established practice field located in the room adjacent to the cafeteria.
As opposed to past workspaces, which senior and co-captain Serena Koopmans said required traveling off campus at inconvenient times, the new location allows team members to transition smoothly to robotics practice after school. The team will save time and increase productivity by practicing just steps away from the robotics lab. Koopmans said the field used in the winter was in Redwood City, and with traffic, it took about 30 to 45 minutes to get there after school.
“Now we can just walk and wheel our robot over. For example, if something breaks on the robot, we don’t have to drive it all the way back to school; we can just fix it at the lab and then bring it back and do more practice,” Koopmans said. “Getting our drivers practice is really important, because it’s just like a sport where you need to be very well oriented with the field and how to score before you compete against other teams.”
Though the practice field offers significant advantages, it has its limitations. According to Koopmans, the cafeteria space does not fully replicate the practice fields used by many other teams.
“It’s not exactly big enough for a full field, we only have around a half, but we’re just kind of making do with what we can,” Koopmans said. “It’s a little bit difficult because there are some low-hanging lights, but we’re just trying to avoid that. This year’s game involves shooting six-inch-wide yellow balls into a hoop, and so we are trying not to hit the lights.”
Nonetheless, the team has not yet run into major issues with the space and has found it effective. Koopmans said she hopes the arrangement can continue in future seasons.
According to sophomore and practice field manager Isha Chitteti, the new practice field was made possible through coordination between the team and school administrators, along with the help of parents.
“Orion Jankowski and also Larry Zitnik were really helpful in helping me organize everything and figuring out what to do with the practice field, along with the next steps,” Chitteti said. “They’re a great help.”
Parents contributed in numerous ways, including building field elements and setting up the practice spaces. Half of the field will remain open for student use during times such as lunch, while the other half will likely be reserved strictly for robotics until April.
Though the space is not yet entirely assembled, the finish line is approaching as remaining components are expected to be installed in the coming weeks.
“Its not a problem that we don’t have a full field yet, but we want to get it finished as soon as possible,” Koopmans said.
The team began building a new robot on Jan. 10, and they hope to complete the robot and the remaining field components by the end of the month.
Chitteti said as the season progresses, the Iron Panthers are grateful for the support that made the practice field possible.
“We have our human player already tossing the balls in to get practice in,” Chitteti said. “All this practice is really necessary for us to reach our goals of ranking high and proceed into competitions, so it’s really nice to have [the practice field] close by.”
The team plans to compete at the Silicon Valley district event from March 13-15, and then the Glendale district event from March 27-29. Besides the guaranteed competitions, there are successive levels that the team can reach. They hope to build on last year’s success and advance to higher levels of competition.
Junior Bruce Peters said the new practice field has already had a noticeable impact on the team’s efficiency.
“It’s hugely impacted our team. It allows us to quickly go from our lab to the practice field, which allows us to iterate so much faster on our design,” Peters said. “If there’s something that breaks in driver practice, an engineer can quickly come and fix it, as opposed to having to wait for two hours for them to get on the train to San Mateo.It’s much better.”
