More than 1,000 high school students compete in London robotics competition
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The arena of the First Robotics Competition at Thompson arena features two towers for the blue and red teams. The competition matches robots made by 35 different high school teams from the Southwestern Ontario area including a team from Michigan, over 1,000 students came to the event to watch the robots they built compete in various tasks like retreiving gears and climbing a rope to win. The captain of the Beal team Fraser Feeney, 17 said they had 60-70 students on their team and were given 6 weeks to build their robot, which meant 2hrs a day during the week and 6 hours a day on Saturday's, "we were at school on Saturday," laughed Feeney. Beal ended up winning the competition Sunday. Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/Postmedia NetworkRobots took over the rink at the Thompson recreation centre on the weekend in a battle of skills that tested the teamwork and ingenuity of their high school masters.
Hundreds of cheering students and parents watched more than 1,000 competitors from 36 schools run robots through three tasks at the Western University facility.
“The teams of robots work in groups of three,” said organizer Joanne Moniz, also the outreach programs co-ordinator for Western engineering. “The robots have to put yellow Wiffle balls into a counter. They have to move gears to the human players, and they have to climb a rope.”
They also have to survive the frequent collisions that come from robots zipping from task to task.
“It’s a timed event,” Moniz said. “Teams get extra points for every robot that climbs successfully. You want all of those climbers because you get bonus points if everyone is up there.”
The competition was organized by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a non-profit organization encouraging student studies.
“It’s just not robotics,” Moniz said. “It’s about building a robot from the ground up, so it’s a lot of teamwork, it’s a lot of problem solving. They also have to fundraise a lot of the money that they put into it the team. They do a lot of promotion.”
The highest honour at the event, the chairperson’s award, is not about having the best robot, Moniz said.
“Are you a good team, in terms of helping other teams? Are you a good role model in the community? What do you do outside of robotics? It’s much, much more than robots.”
One Michigan team joined the Ontario teams Saturday and Sunday.
High-scoring teams advance to the Ontario regional championship in Mississauga and the best teams there head to the world championships in St. Louis, Mo.
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