Guam takes 3rd in FIRST Global Challenge

On Saturday in Hagåtña, four seniors from Father Duenas Memorial School and Simon Sanchez High School showcased their robotics project which won their alliance third place in a competition held over 7,000 miles away in Athens, Greece.

Team Guam, under DoD STARBASE Guam, competed in the FIRST Global Challenge, which focused on technology and its role in supporting sustainable food ecosystems. Team Guam members were Alicia Bacani of Okkodo High School, Rhoderick Calunan of Simon Sanchez High School and, from Father Duenas Memorial School, Justin Ryley, Landon Brewster and Ethan Dela Cruz.

Ryley had just wrapped up demonstrating the capabilities of the team's robotic lift at the Agana Shopping Center when he told The Guam Daily Post about the project and the team's experience competing abroad, saying it "was better than expected."

"We did really good, too. I was one of the engineers and then when we were in the actual competition. I was one of the drivers," he said, explaining his role in the team.

It took the team members roughly five months to build their robot.

"All in all, our first couple (of) months we spent building like simpler bots, and we had a prototype before this one. So we had our prototype. We spent a lot of time on that one, I think two months, and then our current bot, our final one, we made in like the past month. So it was pretty much just an improvement in everything we learned from the prototype because we didn't use a prototype, but we learned the most from it because it's our prototype, and that had a very big influence on our final design," Ryley said.

Brewster, who also was part of the engineering team, said part of the process was failing.

"It took a lot of tries. Like, even now, when we got to the competition, we still have to fix the lift like every so often. And I know that's part of, like, other teams' problems as well. The lift is really ... the hardest part," Brewster said.

Dela Cruz, who is the captain of the team, told the Post that he handled the programming aspects of the robot.

"In my school, I had a Java class that I took, and it was a really big thing because the program, or the clients that I used for the robot, was actually Java. So it helped me to apply my knowledge for it. And yeah, it was really good," Dela Cruz said.

The competition forced the students to step out of their comfort zones to tackle issues in development. Being able to solve problems through programming was an important step in getting the robot to function as intended.

"Like the critical thinking aspect of it, like trying to figure out whether your logic is correct or not and how it applies to your robot so that you can troubleshoot it. ... Problem solving is a really big thing for me," he shared.

Being the captain of the team was a challenging position to hold, said Dela Cruz.

"You're not just a member anymore. You have a lot of duties to fulfill. So, you're not just building the robot. You're making sure that your team is united and together and that, you know, you're strong in the hardships that we face. So, yeah, being a captain, though, it was a really good experience, and it really helped me to develop my leadership and my character," Dela Cruz said.

The team's co-captain, Calunan, helped engineer the lift, which proved to be difficult.

"Definitely difficult. It's also my first year doing all of this, so I didn't have much experience. So, a lot of tutorials, lots of trial and error. ... The lift aspect of the robot basically has these two motors that wind this chain up, and this just lifts these extrusions up. That's all it does," Calunan said.

The team had to build a robot that could pick up balls, then dump them into a tank roughly 200 centimeters tall.

The four students wanted to make the robot's design as simple as possible.

"Through an intricate simulation, Team Guam competed in 12 rounds alongside alliance counterparts, working cooperatively to effectively secure food, balance resources and create a sustainable food system to provide the world with equitable, safe, nutritious and environmentally responsible food," STARBASE Guam said in a press release.

"Team Guam secured third place working together with allied partners with members from Estonia, Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago," STARBASE said in the release.

"Team Guam ranked 17th from a pool of over 190 countries with a final score of 94.91," STARBASE said of the team's individual ranking.

On Saturday, the team members displayed their robot and demonstrated its ability to scoop balls and dump them with the robotic lift.