The odds are stacked against McKeesport Area High School & Technology Center’s robotics team at next month’s national competition in Atlanta. But the odds never have favored the 11-member “Natural Selection” team, which still needs $12,000 just to get to Atlanta, but is determined to make the trip whether the cash is on hand or not. “We never gave up and are not going to give up now,” said team leader Chris Joseph, 17, of White Oak. The team entered the local competition at the last minute and beat 30 other teams at a regional competition in Pittsburgh. That qualified McKeesport for the nationals, where winners from 29 other regionals will compete. McKeesport assembled its robot “Charles” in two weeks, about a third of the time that many other teams had. It is the only team from the Pittsburgh area to qualify for the Atlanta competition, which starts April 21. The team built the robot without the larger budgets or elaborate network of professional mentors and corporate sponsors found in many other districts. General Motors sponsors five teams nationally, while DuPont sponsors a team from Delaware. Other sponsors include NASA, Boeing, Northrup Grumman Space Technology and Honeywell Space and Defense. Teams come from across the United States, as well as from Canada. “For a lot of us, it was the first time that we ever really did anything with robotics or electronics,” Joseph said. The team must raise more than $12,000 for the Atlanta trip. That is a daunting task, but the money will be there, said David Richardson, the planning committee chairman for the FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — regional competition at the University of Pittsburgh. “(McKeesport) will have sponsors,” Richardson said. “They are the one team from this area that qualified.” So far, the team has received money from General Motors; Bombardier; re2, Inc. (Robotics Engineering Excellence), a Lawrenceville robotics firm; and the Technology Collaborative, an economic development organization that supports Pennsylvania’s robotics, cyber-security and digital technologies industries. In the regional and national competitions, the remote-controlled robots compete in a tic-tac-toe style game played on a court 27 feet wide and 52 feet long. Three teams work together to place plastic pyramid-shaped tetrahedrons in nine goals while blocking their three opponents from doing the same. Each match lasts 2 minutes and 15 seconds. The Natural Selection team entered the regional with modest goals. “We were just happy to be invited,” said member Joe Dugan, 17, whose twin brother, Tony, also is on the team. “We never expected to win.” Their father, Michael Dugan, is scheduled to return from military duty in Iraq just before the Atlanta competition and plans to stop in Georgia to see the contest. Part of Natural Selection’s success is the result of luck — a competitor’s robot broke down at the regional. That allowed McKeesport into the finals. But it also is the result of ingenuity, said the team’s engineering teacher, Michael Dischner, who has taught at McKeesport for 12 years. “We have some students with good theoretical minds and others with good mechanical aptitude. You need both for this,” he said. Students kept the design of their robot as uncomplicated as possible. “Some of these teams think too much,” Joe Dugan said. “The more complex a robot, the more likely it is to break.” FIRST is a Manchester, N.H., nonprofit corporation founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. Participating students have a chance to qualify for scholarships from 45 universities and several companies and private organizations.

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