The Tornadoes are a team of students from Trenton Central High School (TCHS) who designed, constructed, and operated a robot for competition in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) program. FIRST lets high school students sink their hands into the blood, sweat, tears, and grease of robotics, and come out with the calloused, gritty hands of engineers.

A few Princetonians lent their help to the Tornadoes and their robot named Patriot. Patriot came out victorious, solidly beating out more than 40 teams at the regional competition held at Drexel University in Philadelphia. That win qualified the team for the FIRST national competition held in Atlanta. Unfortunately, Patriot fell in the first round of the nationals, but the team still looked at the season as a success.

Glenn Northey, a technical staff member who has taught the practical skills of engineering to many classes of mechanical and aerospace engineering students, has been helping the TCHS team for several years. Some Princeton students also donated their time to the team.

Mr. Northey committed countless hours this year to Patriot and the Tornadoes, and he grinned with pride while speaking of the success of this year’s team.

“[Patriot] is an award-worthy piece of engineering in my opinion,” Mr. Northey said. “The other teams were always working on their robots at the competitions, making repairs. We never worked on ours. It worked perfectly. It still works!”

Patriot weighs in at a hefty 129.5 pounds, just squeezing in beneath the 130-pound weight limit. It has two main jobs: gather and deliver balls to a Tornado team member who will shoot baskets at 10 points apiece, and successfully ascend a pole for a whopping 50-point bonus.

The bot has flippers on its sides that glide across the floor to corral balls as they bounce off the basket and drive them over to the TCHS students. Yet Patriot’s secret weapon is the tall hooked arm it used to successfully shimmy up the length of the pole each time.

When extended, the arm looks like a skinny 11-foot-high ladder. More impressive than its height is the speed with which it can fully extend: a mere 2.5 seconds.

“There’s a hole in the ceiling in the machine shop where I first tested it,” Mr. Northey said. “That’s fast.”

The ladder is extended by use of a two-speed joystick so that more ceilings do not have to suffer the same fate. The speed can even be changed while the arm is extending, so the operator can vary between haste and caution. This capability was a very sophisticated piece of engineering that Mr. Northey and the team developed through a great deal of trial and error.

“Evelyn DeLeon, one of the TCHS students, tried to explain the mechanism to the judges, and they just stared at us,” Mr. Northey said. “They didn’t even understand it!”

Rather than spending the team’s limited funds on the necessary parts to build Patriot’s ladder-arm, Mr. Northey had the TCHS students fabricate all the parts themselves, down to every sleeve and ball bearing.

The Tornadoes are accustomed to being frugal and keeping a to-the-penny checkbook, for it is difficult to retain funding for this expensive activity. This year the bulk of the funds for the team were provided by Bristol-Myers Squibb and a contribution from Kenneth “Barney” Barnhart ’45.

The team’s top-notch machining skills and funding from the Trenton school board afforded the Tornadoes and their supporters the 14-hour bus trip down to the finals in Atlanta.

Their loss in Atlanta came as a disappointment, but the Tornadoes felt that just being able to attend the national competition made the adventure a success.