Team building: OMHS robotics mentor talks about program’s growth

The award-winning Oak Mountain High School robotics team took home second place at the UAB Blazer BEST competition in October and will compete on Dec. 7 in the South’s BEST Regional Robotics Championship in Auburn. 

The team — called Oak Mountain High-Tech Solutions — includes students from OMHS as well as other schools and meets three times a week at NAPA Auto Parts on U.S. 280 in preparation.

Jim Carman, 57, has attended most meetings for the past seven years as the group’s lead mentor. But Carman, a senior structural engineer with Southern Company, will put up his tool kit in 2014. 

280 Living reached out to Carman about his experiences in helping create and lead the team as he prepares for the next chapter in his life.

Under what circumstances was the team created, and what was your involvement?

The team was created in 2007 by Tara Powell and Karen Rochester, whose sons were very interested in engineering-related studies. I was asked to assist along with Donald Schnader to mentor the students in designing and building the robot. I agreed both because it sounded interesting to me, and I knew my son, who was going to be a freshman, would be very interested in participating — and boy was he ever! 

Describe the first year in competition, including challenges and triumphs.

The first year was a learning experience for all of us. Fortunately, Schnader was very familiar with robotics, programming and the electronics involved because I was not. I was helping students understand the competition, fleshing out their robot design and functional ideas, and helping keep everyone safe while using the power tools. 

The first year competing in BEST Robotics is a challenge for any team because there are so many rules to learn — not only that year’s game rules, but the specific materials we could use, along with size and weight limitations, to name a few. We realized the night before competition that the robot weighed about 25 pounds, while the limit was 24 pounds. We spent a couple of frantic hours trimming off material and cutting so many holes in various parts, it looked like Swiss cheese. It was somewhere between sad-looking and downright ugly.

We read the rules and designed the robot to do all the scoring functions available in keeping with the game theme. However, when we got to Game Day we had another hard lesson to learn. If you want to win with your robot, you develop a scoring strategy to get the most points you can in the 3-minute game rounds, no matter the theme and the various game pieces. 

Somehow in our first competition, we ended up in fifth place out of around 15 teams with about 60 points. But the four teams ahead of us all had 600-800 points each. They knew how to play the game to win! While it was a bit of a shock to see how the top teams designed their robots to maximize points and not adhere to the game theme, it was a good lesson for us for the years that followed. 

Another outstanding aspect to BEST Robotics is that it is not all about the robot. The unique and great thing about the competition is it challenges the teams to approach it as if they are a business. At Game Day, there is of course the robot game competition, but BEST also judges competitively and gives awards for team marketing booths (simulating trade show booths), a technical Engineering Notebook about the process, marketing presentations, T-shirts, websites, and team spirit and sportsmanship. These “business” aspects of the competition, along with the robot performance, comprise the BEST Awards. 

We quickly found out that to compete in these aspects of BEST we had to seriously ramp up our plans for the next year.

Describe the growth you’ve seen with the team over the past seven years.

The team grew from 15-20 students the first year to more than 40 by its third year and on through its sixth. We lost several seniors last year, and for various reasons several former team members had other commitments and dropped out, so the team is about 27 this year.

I know that a number of team members have found a “family” with the team. For some, this has been a place to fit in when they didn’t have another group that they felt they belonged to. A big part of that “belonging” I credit to the Clemons — Dawn (Mama Dawn) and John (Papa John) Clemons, who hosted the team at their house for the four years their son Justin was on the team. They opened their doors and invited us in, and the team invaded their place for more than three months each fall. Students grew and solidified into a team during these years. 

In our second season, we made it to the South’s BEST Regionals. We have been fortunate to repeat that for five seasons running. The funny thing is, we have only made it to Auburn on our robot’s performance once. But we have consistently made it to Auburn as a team, based on our performance across the board.

In our fourth season, when my oldest son was a senior and my middle son was a freshman, we not only advanced to the regionals at Auburn, but we placed second in the BEST Awards. It gave us the incredible privilege of going to the national competition in Orlando, Fla.

How many hours a week did you give to assisting the team? How many hours do its members put in?

We had to meet after school hours and off-campus at people’s garages and workshops. This led to a lot of inconsistency in which students could or would show up at the work times, typically Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. or later, and Saturday from 9 a.m. until we finished. So, the time individual team members contributed varied widely. Some gave two to four hours per week, while a few who really loved it may have put in 12 to 15 hours per week.

Including team coordination work outside of the team meetings, I typically put in 15 to 20 hours per week, and much more on game week, when we often worked every evening to pull it all together.

What was your motivation for continuing to give guidance for seven years?

I try to be engaged where my interests meet with my sons’ participation. My oldest son competed all four of his high school years, and he would tell you that robotics was the highlight of each of those years. My middle son was a key member of the team for three years as well. 

I continued mentoring this season, only on the Marketing Team because of a previous commitment, but limited it to the first Game Day Competition at UAB. During the six-week season, we invited other parents with students on the team to step up. Now that they are advancing once again to South’s BEST Regionals at Auburn, those parents can learn the ropes for the team to move ahead in the years to come.

Describe the current team and its progress through competition.

This year was a challenging year. There were almost no returning seniors but a large group of interested freshmen, many of whom were just slightly familiar with the competition. We had no location to build the robot until the third week, and we were shorthanded on parents and mentors the first half of the six weeks of competition.

Amazingly, when I didn’t think we had a real shot at making it to South’s BEST Regionals this year, the team once again pulled together. It only happened due to the steady leadership of Donna Strong, the team’s teacher sponsor in her third season heading up the team, and Lucy Schley, mentor extraordinaire heading up the always-challenging Engineering Notebook — a required document describing the engineering process and how it was applied in developing game strategy and designing the robot to meet the challenges of the game. 

What does the future hold for OMHS robotics?

Based on the solid structure of the team put in place the first few years it was formed, what the team has learned over the years and the parent mentors now in place, I think the team is on a solid foundation and on a good track to carry on successfully. There are a few very experienced upper classmen along with a large number of highly interested freshmen and sophomores that will keep the team energized going forward. I expect they will win many more BEST Awards and perhaps a top robot spot or two over the next four years.

For more, visit oakmountainrobotics.com contact Dr. Donna Strong at Oak Mountain High School, 682-5200 or dsstrong@shelbyed.k12.al.us.