The Port Townsend FIRST Robotics Competition “Roboctopi” team’s new machine might have been gleaming orange metal when it was officially unveiled to the public at their building lab on Feb. 26, but its name makes it sound a bit more like a lemon.

Roboctopi President Olivia Morningstar explained the name derives from the robot’s competition function of picking up squishy lemon-yellow balls and then shooting them at a target 8 feet off the ground, “easy peasy lemon squeezy,” thus inspiring the robot’s designation of E-Z P-Z.

While the robot’s internal belt system, which moves the balls from the collection intake to the shooting mechanism, runs at about 4,000 revolutions per minute, Morningstar said the machine’s ball control and handling is much more important than its speed, which can ever be a detriment.

“Because these are squishy balls, we can’t just rush them through or else they might compress into each other and create a jam inside the machine,” Morningstar said. “Once the robot is on the field, we can’t touch it to clear the jam, so we have to make sure it doesn’t jam in the first place.”

The robot’s other competition functions include manipulating a colored wheel Morningstar compared to the game show “Wheel of Fortune,” as well as lifting itself up by a grappling hook, no mean feat for a piece of machinery that weighs 125 pounds.

The Roboctopi team members felt strongly that their robot should not only be able to accomplish its tasks, but also look good while doing them, which led to Dog House Powder Coating of Sequim donating a paint job to ensure the robot’s exterior frame was not only bright orange, but also glittery.

Morningstar said the Roboctopi also have three 3D printers to use, including two owned by students and one at their shop.

“A lot of our parts were 3D-printed, including our climbing hook, our intake wheels and pulleys and probably about 10% of the total parts of the robot,” Morningstar said. “This is only the second year we’ve had 3D-printing capability. When you build a robot, all the parts have to fit precisely. If there’s any sloppiness in the system, it can lead to problems. With the 3D printers, if the parts don’t already exist, we can tailor-make them.”

Morningstar expressed pride in how the team even custom-designed the “zippy” metal plates that are part of the robot.

Morningstar came onboard the Roboctopi in time to be on the ground floor of a renaissance for the team, since it ended its 2017 season with only four remaining members, with the rest having graduated.

Morningstar, along with team members such as Evan Eaves and Sam Lott, was part of an influx of student members in 2018, which was followed by what she described as “another huge wave this year.”

Not only did they gain access to one of their 3D printers from Lott, but Eaves also pointed out how such healthy recruitment numbers contribute to the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) mission of inculcating in “as many people as possible the knowledge of engineering and robotics.”

Morningstar agreed, expressing enthusiasm for “training up new members with fresh eyes and fresh minds,” as they’ve tackled first-time tasks such as 3D-printing a scale model of their entire competition arena, thanks to a computer-aided design model sent by FIRST.

This armed the Roboctopi with roughly 20 student members, of which 16 headed into competition at Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish from Feb. 28 through March 1, with a follow-up round of competition in Bellingham from March 20 to 22.

The deliberately limited window for building and competition has seen some students thrown into the thick of things shortly after joining, with first-year member Addy Asbell being handed a bandsaw three days after joining, and heading into her first competition only two or three weeks later.

“It was an off-season event,” Morningstar hastened to add, as she emphasized that more students are still welcome to join, regardless of their interests. “We have a whole crop of people who have never done anything like this before. No prior knowledge is necessary. Whether you’re interested in designing, building or programming, we’ve got something for you.”