Columbus High robotics team first from Georgia to reach world finals

The Columbus High School students representing the Columbus Space Program came home Sunday from Houston as the first Georgia team to have reached the finals at the FIRST Robotics World Championships.

“Out of over 3,000 teams in the world, our team was two wins away from being the World Champions,” wrote Luther Richardson, who directs the Columbus Space Program, which comprises Columbus Robotics, in an email to supporters. Richardson is a physics and computer science teacher at Columbus High.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international not-for-profit organization, based in Manchester, N.H., that operates the FIRST Robotics Competition (grades 9-12), the FIRST LEGO League (grades 4-8), the FIRST LEGO League Jr. (grades K-3) and the FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 7-12).

More than 400 teams qualified for the 2017 FIRST Robotics world championships, divided into six fields. The Columbus team was among 66 in the Newton field, including teams from Australia, China, Israel, Mexico and Turkey, Richardson explained.

After winning the Newton field, the Columbus team advanced to the playoffs, which were conducted in Minute Maid Park, where the Houston Astros play Major League Baseball.

The competition, Richardson said, is played with alliances of three robots competing against each other.

“Our alliance included a team from California and a team from Texas,” Richardson wrote. “The final six alliances played a round robin tournament on the ‘Einstein field’ and our alliance was 4-1 and made it to the finals as the top seed.

“Two back-to-back technical glitches that we had not seen before kept us from being World Champions at Houston. The team was definitely sad but they are the first team from Georgia to ever make it to the finals at Einstein.”

This is the third straight year the Columbus team qualified for the FIRST Robotics world championships, considered the largest competition testing high schools students in the STEM skills of science, technology, engineering and math – as well as their ability to collaborate and cooperate.

This year, the Columbus team qualified for the world championships by finishing second in the state championship at Stegeman Coliseum on the University of Georgia campus in Athens.

The team members from Columbus High are:

▪ Josh Barton

▪ Austin Bell

▪ Drake Braski

▪ Skyla Brooks

▪ Rohan Chandrashekar

▪ Crystal Chen

▪ Mary Chen

▪ Nicholas Chen

▪ Su Ji Cho

▪ Amber Diehl

▪ Kevin Guernsey

▪ Vineeth Harish

▪ Darris Holland

▪ Christine Hong

▪ Joshua Lee

▪ Alex Lee-Boulton

▪ Kyle Mitchell

▪ Youbin Park

▪ Eric Parker

▪ Akshat Patel

▪ Ashita Patel

▪ Sarth Patel

▪ Hallie Richardson

▪ Sruthi Sethuram

▪ Victoria Thornton

▪ Megan Throlson

▪ Tyler Toma

▪ Vivian Vu

Although they didn’t compete with Columbus High at the state and world championships, Hardaway High School students contributed to the Columbus Robotics team this school year. The team members from Hardaway High are: Camron Joyner, Carlos Patterson, Alisa Jones, Xavier Dubose, Kendarius Walker, Kimberly Cabrera and Ryan Leddon. Hardaway teachers Karen Stephenson and Cora Suggs also helped, Richardson said.

“They made the best bumpers we’ve ever had,” Richardson told the Ledger-Enquirer in an interview Monday. “They weren’t in attendance (at the championships), but during the build process, they were definitely part of the team and produced a part of the robot that competed.”

Lead programmer and drive team member Vineeth Harish, a Columbus High junior, said in an interview Monday with the Ledger-Enquirer that he is “immensely proud of our team” for qualifying for the world championships the past two years and reaching the finals this year.

“We’ve come so far this season,” said Vineeth, 17. “... It’s just astounding. It’s like a dream. It’s been just an amazing experience altogether.”

The team members spend an average of 40 hours per week, including weekends, working on robotics, Vineeth estimated, from training during the fall, to the six-week build season starting in January, to the competitions in the spring.

Adding the students from Hardaway to the team this year, Vineeth said, has been a boost. He emphasized any MCSD high school student can apply to join the team by visiting the program’s website: columbusspaceprogram.weebly.com.

“Most of the teams are actually conglomerations of all the schools in their county,” Vineeth said. “You get different ideas that way, from having a variety of backgrounds and people on your team.”

The Columbus Space Program lists the following organizations as helping the robotics team, officially named FRC Team 4188, with mentorship or funding:

United Technologies (Pratt & Whitney), Aflac, WestRock, Kysor/Warren, Booz Allen Hamilton, the W.C. Bradley Company, U.S. Army, Columbus Water Works, Cpak Technology Solutions, T&S Machining, Lockheed Martin, MSC Industrial Supply, Oneda and Synovus. The program also thanked the Muscogee County School District in a news release, saying MCSD “has worked behind the scenes to help expand the program and provide facilities to help the team reach its goals.”

This story was originally published April 24, 2017 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Columbus High robotics team first from Georgia to reach world finals."