Foley Freeze Has a Vision for Winning This Year

Team plans to build on last year’s award winning tech

By Anne Schaller and Sarah Schuller

The Foley Freeze robot may be deaf, but it has a vision of winning!  

In the Infinite Recharge game this year the robot will rely on a camera to see the object ahead. The robot also needs to have vision to spin a wheel, and figure out where to throw the power cells. 

Last year Foley Freeze had an unprecedented year for the programming department, winning the so-called autonomous award  – the top honor for a vision system – at both the Troy district competition and the state competition. 

“The key component of vision last year was to score easily and be able to track where the robot was at all times on the field,” said Emma Green, who was one of the programmers on the vision team last year. 

But the team won’t rest on their laurels, said Ariana Kerkmaz, who is this year’s programming team lead. Foley Freeze has to prove again that they are one of the best for programing. 

This year, as part of a Star Wars themed game, there is a control panel that is a wheel that the robot needs to spin. The wheel that has four colors (red, yellow, green, blue) visible on the top and bottom, and the robot also needs to be able to see them. It’s even more difficult because team don’t know what color they need to identify until the game is underway.

The robot also needs to find yellow balls, which are called Power Cells, and score them into goals called Shield Generators.

“This year we can use the cameras to detect the Power Cells and targets.”  Arianna Kerkmaz said. “The cameras will help us indicate where the Power Cell is.”