By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
A digital clock fixed above a doorway counts down the days until the competition commences, as members of the South Portland Robotics Team, otherwise known as The Riot Crew, bustle back and forth Tuesday evening in a room cluttered with tools and robots from years past.
In roughly five weeks time, the team will ship its finished machine to Manchester, N.H. for the 17th annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, where they will compete against 50 other teams in the regional event. The season is capped by a championship competition from April 17 to 19 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Founded in 1989 by New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST aims to inspire young people to take an interest in science and technology, according to the organization’s Web site. More than 37,500 high school students on more than 1,500 international teams will compete in this year’s robotics event.
“Right now we’re in our build cycle,” said Jon Meade, who has coached the team for 11 of the 13 years it has been in existence. A former teacher, Meade is now self-employed.
The 26-member team is sponsored by Fairchild Semiconductor. Volunteers from Fairchild as well as other local businesses work with the team, as they develop their machines offering assistance and technical expertise. Currently the team meets every weekday evening and Saturday mornings in a flat-roofed building adjacent to the South Portland Community Center’s parking lot.
Rather than draw up robot blueprints, Meade said the team scrawls quick sketches on dry erase boards and creates crude prototypes.
“We’ve eliminated our design scope so it’s not going to have a lot of gizmos,” Meade said. “In the past our robots had several functions, [but] we may not need a Swiss Army knife this year.”
In this year’s competition, teams will participate in “FIRST Overdrive,” a game requiring students to build a robot, following strict specifications, to race around a track and knock down 40 inch inflated Trackballs and move them around the track, passing the ball over or under an overpass, according to a FIRST press release.
At the center of the room, students and adult volunteers gather around a large frame, supporting what looks like an oversized bouncy ball. Backing a robot from a previous competition under the frame, the team tries to use the machine’s arm, constructed with a pneumatic cylinder and a paddle,  to knock the bright red ball out of the frame.
Jim Milan, an engineer at Idexx Laboratories, worked with students on the machine’s control system and chasse and said he expects they will be able to drive the base around by next Saturday.
Milan, who helped start the team, said the students come to know every nut and bolt of the machine.
“We try to have the students do as much of the work as possible,” Milan said.
Junior Sam Helmke traveled back and forth from a tool bench to a grinder, carrying a small black wheel. Once a “Lego obsessed” kid, Helmke joined the team four years ago – a result of the team’s middle school recruitment efforts.
“I’ve always liked building stuff and getting my hands dirty,” Helmke says. “I helped build the robot in 2005 and I haven’t backed off since.”
Meade said after a competition, the team takes the robot on the road to area schools, where they perform demonstrations. The team has a dramatic effect on students, Meade said.
“There’s a lot of student to adult interaction so I have kids who are very savvy getting their points across,” Meade said. “Sometimes kids are discussing strategy with the head of Otis Elevator – and they’ve got to be convincing.”
And it’s not just engineering and computer skills that students will gain from the Riot Crew experience, Meade said. Students are designing The Riot Crew T-shirts and learning about media studies by filming a documentary showing the team’s progress.
Freshman Patrick Perkins is learning about public relations as he contacts local news outlets in seek of coverage for the team. In addition, Perkins is helping to program the robot so when the driver moves the controller to the left, the robot will also move to the left.
“I like to do that stuff,” said Perkins. “I’ve been thinking about going to school for computer science or computer programming in Orono [at the University of Maine].”
While the team lost 16 seniors last year, Meade said having a smaller team and tighter resources has never held them back. The Riot Crew has made it into the top eight, if not the top four, in its last four competitions, he said. In 2003, the team won the BAE Granite State Regional event with its robot, “Box-tah” and qualified for the championship. Last year the team also proceeded to the championship competition in Atlanta, Meade said.
    For more information about the South Portland Robotics Team, visit www.riotcrew.org.