Bagel Bytes - Ending the Season with a Bang

Two months, two competitions, and one extraordinary robot. This season, the Bagel Bytes reached an “all-time high” as their newest build takes them places they have never been before, says one of the team’s co-presidents, junior Nathan Salyer. 

Since the beginning of January, The Bagel Bytes (FRC team 702), Culver City High School's competitive robotics team, has been working diligently to create this season's robot, affectionately known as Bury Byte. They have been preparing to enter Bury Byte in the First Robotics Competitions (FRC), which are regional tournaments where high schools in the area create robots to compete in complex, skill-based games. FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international, nonprofit organization that aims to educate students, ages 5-18, about STEM. FIRST sponsors the FRC tournaments. The first competition that The Bagel Bytes (known as Team 702 for purposes of the FRC) went to with their robot was in Ventura, and the second was hosted by Glendale High School. At both, Bury Byte performed incredibly well, so by the time they got to their second competition, they were definitely “one of the better teams out there”, says Salyer. 

This season, there was a little twist to the games. Usually, the robots are required to pick up and move an object from one end of the gym to the other. However, this year, the competition required Bury Byte to shoot balls into a box called a “hub” and climb a ladder. The team had to figure out how to shoot hundreds of yellow balls placed around the gym under time constraints and with the condition that Bury Byte could only score points about two thirds of the time—a stressful, yet entertaining performance that Bury Byte executed to near perfection. To compete in these competitions, the team must not only make sure their robot can carry out the task, but also do so within certain design parameters. They have to make sure Bury meets certain weight, height, width, and length parameters, and that the pieces cost less than $6,000. Though the season ended in March, the team has plans to show off their robot at Da Vinci High School for an off-season event. 

Their success would not have been possible without the collaboration and hard work of their multifaceted team. In order to “effectively design a robot,” they had to “work together really closely”, says Sayler. From programmers and engineers to business heads, everyone had an important role in making it to the finish line. Ending their eight-week build season in high spirits, the Bagel Bytes are stronger than ever.