Junior Karen Wang, sophomore Caine Ardayfio, freshman Nerissa Finnen, and junior Andy Tang worked on University High School’s project, titled “FIRST Robotics Competition: Route Optimization.”
A team of University High School students will travel to Beijing, China in an all-expenses-paid trip this week to compete in the “SenseTime Cup” International High School Student Artificial Intelligence Invitational Tournament.
University High School’s team — sophomore Caine Ardayfio, freshman Nerissa Finnen, junior Andy Tang, and junior Karen Wang — is one of just three high school teams from the United States who will present their project at the international competition on Saturday, March 23.
University High School was invited to submit an artificial intelligence project in January, and the team of students came up with an idea that enhanced the work they were already doing with the FIRST Robotics Competition this year.
Their proposal abstract reads:
The FIRST robotics competition began in 1992 and today, there are thousands of teams across the world. Inspiring high school students with a combination of competition and cooperation, FIRST is able to teach students about the inner workings of engineering, programming, and circuitry.
This year, our school decided to participate in FIRST as rookies. Our robot is designed to be able to expand from approximately 1.3 to 3 meters and shoot a large, rubber ball into a small goal, as well as attach panels to the sides of competition objects.
However, FIRST has a prominent programming component. In order to design the most efficient route for our robot, we will create a virtual environment with an AI component for the robot to practice in. Using machine learning, we will attempt to train the AI to generate optimized code for our robot.
The students used the software Unity to design a virtual environment with an AI component for the robot. Using AI, the team was able to find an optimized route for the robot, giving them a competitive advantage by producing an efficient means of scoring in the FIRST competition.