CLEVELAND — With five minutes before his team’s first practice round, Tyler Tucker started to get nervous. “This is it,” the Admiral King senior said. “Here we go.’’

After 120 hours of welding, soldering and wiring, it all came down to this.

DAVID RICHARD / CHRONICLE

Greg Bratulic, left, and Tyler Tucker watch as the Admiral King Rambots’ robot gets stuck during its first run Thursday at the FIRST Buckeye Regional Robotics Competition at Cleveland State’s Wolstein Center.

Tucker and his teammates — the Rambots — performed some last-second adjustments, carted up their 105-pound robot and headed for the middle of Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center.

The Rambots are one of 46 teams from throughout the Midwest competing in the 2008 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Buckeye Regional Robotics Competition, which started Thursday and ends Saturday.

The teams — with five to 20 members — have been building their robots since January and were eager to show off their mettle Thursday for the practice rounds.

The rules and objectives of the contest change each year.

This year’s event is like a big, robotic version of a relay race. For rounds of 2 minutes and 15 seconds, two “alliances” — each with three teams — face off on an enclosed circular race track. A driver from each team remotely maneuvers the robots around the track and tries to knock down two 40-inch inflated balls from a 6½-foot overpass. The teams earn points each time their robots and trackballs cross the finish lines.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is.

“The games get harder and harder each year,” Tucker said.

And he should know. This is his fourth straight competition.

As a freshman, Tucker — now the Rambots’ captain — originally balked at the suggestion to join the team.

“I thought it was only for nerds,” he said.

Since then, he has grown to crave satisfaction from “having problems and fighting through them.” He has competed with the team every year since its first appearance in 2005 and now plans to attend Bowling Green State University to major in mechanical engineering.

But thoughts of college and a career were unimportant Thursday as the seconds ticked off before the first match.

He was just nervous.

When the team’s name was called, its members were struggling to fix the robot’s pivoted, extended arm which Tucker designed specifically to knock the balls from their perch.

The team — with help from its adviser and two mentors/sponsors from the Nordson Corp. — scrambled and panicked but ultimately got the arm in fighting shape.

But even with such minor setbacks, and the swarm of butterflies in their stomachs, the team’s members were miles ahead of last year.

“At this point last year, we had smoke above our heads and 15 officials running over to help,’’ Tucker said, laughing. “So, yeah, we’re in slightly better shape.
We’ve learned a lot this year.”

A team from Amherst Steele High School — the Amherst Steele Comets — doesn’t have experience on its side.

This is the team’s first year in the competition, and its aims are a little more modest than the Rambots’. Its robot doesn’t have a 7-foot arm coming out of the top or a detailed defensive strategy. Instead, members tried to keep it simple by building a lighter, more nimble robot that would focus on speedily weaving around the course.

As rookies, they’ve put less pressure on themselves. Dreams of heading to Atlanta to compete in the nationals are a little more distant. They just want to have fun.

“Driving it is like playing an old arcade game,” said John Powell, a junior and the team’s driver. “It’s not so complicated, really.”

The teams both fared fairly well in their first practice match, despite some setbacks. At the last second, the Comets were told they had to remove the top of their robot (which wasn’t really important anyway, or so they say), and the battery dislodged in the middle of the bout.

“They’re just small problems,” Powell said. “I kind of thought it would explode.”

The Rambots — with higher aspirations — looked with a more critical eye.

“It doesn’t turn as quick as we thought, and our arm got stuck,” Tucker said.

But, hey, it was just a practice round. The real stuff starts today, and both teams are feeling confident.

“I think we’ve got a really good shot at winning,” Tucker said. “I mean, at least our robot isn’t on fire.”

Contact Michael Baker at 329-7128 or mbaker@chroniclet.com.

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