Oswego-Based Robotics Team Headed To World Championships

OSWEGO, IL — Oswego-based Robotics team Turbo Charged is headed to the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Detroit from April 28 to May 2, with an Xbox controller-driven robot that stacks plastic blocks. Comprised of a handful of teenagers from around the area, they have worked for months - and survived several rounds of competition - to attain first place status in their contest league in Illinois.

"I'm feeling pretty confident," team member and Oswego High School senior Alex Oberfranc said. "As soon as we get to complete our [robot's] arm, get it... more consistent... more structural."

Alex is the main driver for the robot, and has its structure and moving parts as his primary concern. His younger brother, OHS sophomore Ryan Oberfranc, handles much of the team's 3D modeling needs. Each team member has something to contribute to the robot's design and implementation, team co-captain and OHS senior David Krake said, and their efforts - dozens of labor hours a week, every week - are paying off. However, Krake said there are definitely teams that make them nervous; that they will have to watch for in Detroit. This is doubly true considering the structure of the competition.

Each team in Detroit will have to prove their home-made robots' mettle in both a 'tele-op' round, where the robot is controlled remotely by a human driver, and an 'autonomous' round, where the robot will have to use pre-programmed commands to carry out its task without human intervention. In both rounds the goal is the same: move plastic blocks from one corner of a small arena to another, and stack them on a board as high as possible. Krake said the team excels in the tele-op round, but struggles in autonomous.

"'Gluten Free' is one of the teams we're most worried about... they have very good autonomous, year after year," Krake said. "That's kind of where we get behind."

The team is currently working on addressing that weakness, as well as improving areas where they already do well. They are assisted in their efforts via sponsorships from fabrication business HQC Inc., who helped them 3D print some of their robot's components, and electronic hardware company TE Connectivity. Most of the robot was built from scratch with these and other sponsors' help, though some more complicated parts - the motor, for example - were purchased.

"Some of the stuff we have to buy is the hubs, which is what you connect all the parts into to run," Ryan Oberfranc said. "The wheels were also purchased."

While they have private sponsors, the team is not affiliated with or supported financially by the Oswego School District. District 308 is where the team got its start in 2016, and all the team's members are students at Oswego High School or Oswego East High School, but they operate independently as an organization.

Team parent and coach Deanna Oberfranc said Turbo Charged separated from the district so the team could be more independent in pursuing its community service objectives - another prerequisite for competition.

"We were with the [Oswego] school district, and I was a coach starting half-way into [2016]," team parent and coach Deanna Oberfranc said. "so... we started with the school district, but after year two, the kids decided that they wanted to have more freedom as far as outreach and community service. So at that time they split from the school district and started to do their own thing."

Despite not being with Oswego 308, Turbo Charged's members said they will be representing Oswego in their division of the FIRST Tech Challenge Competition. They are at the second-highest level of competition, below only college students who compete with industrial-sized robots on football fields. In Detroit, they will be competing with teams not only from the U.S. - like New Hampshire-based Gluten Free - but from all around the world.

It's a daunting process, but one the Turbo Charged teens said they're ready to meet.

"We do three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 9 p.m. and six on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.," Krake said.