The Bacon Academy Robocats
Most people spend their weekends sleeping in, watching Netflix, or doing homework. Johno Boski spends his designing and building functioning robots as Captain of the Bacon Academy Robotics Team. The Robocats have lately caught the attention of Colchester administration due to their success at regional robotics competitions and have littered the Twitter timelines of many. For this reason I decided to sit down with Johno and ask him a couple questions to get a better understanding of one of the lesser known programs here at Bacon.
Interviewer: Ben Chapman, Grade 11
Interviewee: Johno Boski, Grade 12
Interview Setting: Bacon Academy Auditorium
BEN CHAPMAN: So, what is your position in the robotics team?
JOHNO BOSKI: I’m team captain of the robotics team here at Bacon.
CHAPMAN: How long have you been involved in robotics?
BOSKI: I’ve been involved in robotics since freshman year. There was an FLL team at the middle school that I was a part of as well.
CHAPMAN: What are the differences between that team and the one here at Bacon?
BOSKI: So there’s four different levels of robotics: there’s FLL junior, which is for younger kids like kindergarteners and the such, then there’s FLL which goes up to middle school and at that point you’re either going to FTC or FRC. FTC is also sort of a bridge which branches into the middle school.
CHAPMAN: Which one is our robotics team involved in?
BOSKI: We are FRC.
CHAPMAN: Oh okay, and do you know how many groups are part of that?
BOSKI: Right now we’re presently at about 7,000 - there may be more across the world.
CHAPMAN: How many people are a part of the robotics team here at Bacon?
BOSKI: We have 23 students and we have around 20 mentors but half of them aren’t continuously there because they’re peer mentors since they’re people in college coming back to help out.
CHAPMAN: And what kind of different tasks does everyone have? Does everyone do something different or are there people who do the same thing which each robot you make?
BOSKI: It depends on what position you’re in. There’s people who are designing, people who are building, and people who are doing the business side of things. They usually overlap in what they’re doing seeing as we want everyone to have a part in building the robot and being able to help. So, the largest portion of people are on the building side of things because that takes a lot more time and is the main focus. There is a part of it where you’re going to have to do an essay, a presentation, and you’re also doing a video. There’s another part of it where you can do a music video but we haven’t done that yet because that requires taking a lot more time and we don’t have enough manpower to do that.
CHAPMAN: Are there any coaches on the robotics team who are also faculty at Bacon or all they all parent volunteers?
BOSKI: They’re all parent volunteers or they’re coming back because they’ve had their child on the team. There is technically one paid employee which would be Mr. Deslandes but he’s only paid $1 to run the team because we can fundraise ourselves most of the time. It would help to be funded by the school but it’s not necessary.
CHAPMAN: How many robots do you typically make in a season?
BOSKI: We usually make about one. Sometimes we fix the old test robots and prototypes but usually just one.
CHAPMAN: How long does the season last?
BOSKI: Build season starts in January and goes until just recently when we had our final competition. Robotics season starts before then so you can get all your training in and stuff like that.
CHAPMAN: How many competitions do you go to?
BOSKI: We go to a minimum of three. Two are during the actual season and one beforehand where you play last year’s game and you learn how it works so you can understand how future games might be able to be played.
CHAPMAN: Does each competition have a different task that your robot has to do?
BOSKI: You have the same task or tasks. Sometimes you have multiple and a variety. Most times you have two but this year we had three so it was a lot more complicated but it’s always the same.
CHAPMAN: So would you just go back and program the robots differently to pick up different skills as you go on and realize how it can be improved?
BOSKI: We actually did a whole entire rework of certain portions of it after the first competition because you’ve been on the field and you understand it. Then you can fix your robot if it’s not functioning correctly or fix certain areas or certain functionalities.
CHAPMAN: How have you guys been performing so far this year at the competitions you’ve been to?
BOSKI: This year is the hardest year because it’s the hardest game they’ve ever made. What you have to do this year is pick up wiffle balls about five inches in diameter and then shoot those wiffle balls into a scoring area which is one foot across but it’s eight feet up in the air- and that’s only one task. Then you have to pick up gears which you pick up at your player’s station that you’re putting onto a peg which then gets pulled up into our “air ship” since this year’s theme was Steampunk. In addition you then have to climb a one inch thick rope. Those are the three tasks we had this year.
CHAPMAN: How have you guys been performing in comparison to past years?
BOSKI: This year we haven’t been doing as well because this year is a little bit more complicated and other teams that have more members upwards of 80 in comparison to our 20 can cause a little bit of a flux between the difficulty.
CHAPMAN: Do they have different divisions? Because I know at other types of competitions they’ll split it up based off of how many people go to the school.
BOSKI: They don’t have different divisions.
CHAPMAN: So it’s basically a free for all?
BOSKI: Yeah it’s basically a free for all. There was in fact a team there that had five student members. They did extremely well actually but that was because they were a team that had disbanded and then reformed so they were technically a “rookie” team but they weren’t fully a rookie team they were just regaining their members.
CHAPMAN: Do you know how long the team here at Bacon has been around?
BOSKI: The team here at Bacon has been around since 2004 so it’s been quite a long time.
CHAPMAN: I’ve recently seen the administration tweeting out about some of the awards you guys have gotten. Do you know of any of the awards the people on your team have received?
BOSKI: Throughout the season Matt Mancini has been posting about it. Lizzie Ladegard has scored not just once, but twice at both competitions for Star of the Day which is meant for Safety Star of the Day. This means she has been prepared making sure everyone is staying safe - not just us but everyone. We had a safety survey so we could actually understand what people had to do and how we could help them. Collin Maynard has now gone on to the next level on the Dean’s List which is meant to be what a student on the team is signified as what they are meant to be. Mr. Deslandes has gone on to the next step of Woodie Flowers. He’s our head mentor and he guided us with writing an essay that I did with two other students and was all student-done.
