SEASIDE It’s a puzzle that has kept Seaside High School students Cody Carmichael and Jessie Pierson busy for nearly two hours.

How can they connect an “arm” to a robot that will slap down a ramp so the robot can roll on top of it?

Although they’re scratching their heads over the challenge, the seniors have been through it before. This is their second year on Seaside High’s robotics team, and they have overcome many tough problems.

“Last year, we were doing everything from scratch. We literally knew nothing,” Carmichael said. “This year, we knew what we had to do.”

What they and the 22 other team members have to do is build a robot that will shoot foam basketballs into hoops of varying heights while fighting off competing robots operated by two other teams.

The robot with the most points at the end of the AutoDesk Portland Regional Robotics Tournament March 8 through 10 will head to the national contest.

During the basketball competition, called the “Rebound Rumble,” the robots will face a variety of obstacles on a 27-foot by 54-foot court, including a teeter-totter-like ramp, where one end needs to touch the floor before a robot can roll onto it and cross to the other end of the ramp.

But these robots don’t look anything like the lovable C-3PO or R2-D2 in “Star Wars.” Essentially, they are electronic boxes with wheels and lots of wires.

Some of the parts came from last year’s dismantled robot. After Seaside High science-technology teacher Mike Brown paid $5,000 to register the team, other parts were supplied by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), the nonprofit organization that has sponsored the competition for 21 years.

But some of the parts have to be bought or scrounged. The rules prohibit the team from spending more than $4,000 on the robot.

The after-school robotics team has six weeks to build the machine. At midnight Feb. 21, the robot is put in a box until the competition in March.

Building a robot is not all the team must do, however. There’s the paperwork to be filled out, the website – www.team3673.org – to be worked on, essays to be written, promotional materials to develop, photos to take, a pit crew to train and myriad other chores. Awards are given for many of these ancillary projects, as well as for teams displaying good sportsmanship, team spirit, willingness to assist other teams, etc.

Of 58 teams competing in the tournament last year, the CYBORG Seagulls (the initials stand for “Creative Young Brains Observing and Redefining Greatness”) placed 56th.

They expect to do better this year.

“The first time we had it on the field, something on one of the wheels blew out,” recalled sophomore Alexzandria Still, who used a joystick to “drive” the robot by remote control last year.

“It kept going in circles. We had to wait until the competition was over to get it off the field to fix it,” she said.

The next effort required the robot to hang inflated tubes on pegs, but the arm on that robot didn’t work properly.

“We didn’t know what to do; it was our first year,” Still said. “We had no clue. We thought there were going to be a couple of teams and no crowd. But there were so many teams and so many people.”

Seaside High is one of only three high schools on the coast to participate in the competition. Schools in Newport and Gold Beach also will have robots, Brown said.

The students arrive at the portable classroom-turned-workshop behind Seaside High after school and don’t go home until 7 or 8 p.m. Many, like Still, may go to swim practice (also coached by Brown) or basketball practice, then put in a few more hours on the robot before heading home.

“It’s an incredible amount of time and work, and it’s all volunteer,” Brown said.

The same can be said for the hours spent by mentors from the community who work alongside the team members, puzzling out the way the parts should fit together. This year, the students were taught how to build cardboard models of the parts to determine if they would work before trying to fabricate them from metal or buying them.

In addition to advising the students, and acting as a “gofer” to collect parts and other items, Brown also raises the money to put on the program. Last year, he received $14,000 in grants, donations and sponsorships. This year, it’s hovering near $12,000. Any donation is welcome, he said.

 “When you do real things with real people, it costs real money,” Brown added.

JC Penney in Astoria, Warrenton Kia and NASA are among the school’s sponsors.

Besides paying for the registration and parts, the donations also pay the transportation, food and lodging for team members involved in the three-day competition in Portland.

“We have a very high free and reduced lunch rate at the school,” he said. “We try to reduce the cost to students.”

Unlike some of the other schools, which charge students to participate in the robotics program, Seaside students are asked only to commit their time.

But several students said they receive a lot in return for those hours. Sophomore Holden Johnson, who is a second-year team member, said his experience as co-leader of the programming team will help him in the future.

“Programming is what I do,” he said. “I plan to become a game designer or a computer programmer.”

He also plans to apply for one of the scholarships that might be available.

The past competition, Johnson said, taught him and the others “to work as a group under serious time constraints.”

Although this is the first year on the team for sophomore Noah Clark, he’s hoping some of his dad’s experience will somehow help him. His father builds robots for industrial applications.

“I’ve always been fascinated with things like this,” Clark said.

Sophomore Jordan Miller, who joined the team this year, calls herself a “team member-in training.” But Miller, whose father is a plumber, has more skills than many students did when they first started building robots. She knows how to use a screwdriver and how to drill holes, and that puts her ahead of some of the other team members.

At first, Miller said, she wasn’t interested in being on the team, but her friend and fellow teammate Aubri Lyons “dragged” her to the workshop one day.

Now, her enthusiasm matches everyone else’s determination.

“This is really fun,” she said. “I get to be part of a cool thing. I get to build robots.”