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Battle of the bots

Cathedral hosts high school robotics tournament

Cathedral’s middle school robotics team, the “Chill Hounds,” conduct maintenance on their robot in their pit station. L to R: Solomon Pekrul, August Pekrul and Jeremy Eckstein.

NEW ULM — For one day, Cathedral High School was converted into an arena dedicated to robotic engineering.

Cathedral hosted its second robotic tournament Saturday, open to students in 7th through 12th grade. A total of 32 robotics teams competed to build the best bot. Cathedral students competed on five of the teams, but the remaining 27 teams came from Mankato, Madison Lake, Ramsey, Sartell and St. Cloud.

The competition took place in Cathedral’s gym. Half the gym was blocked off to create two fields to hold the robot matches. The rest of the gym and some of Cathedral’s classrooms were converted into robot pit stations where the teams could perform maintenance on the bots between matches. The comparison to auto racing pit stations is accurate. These team stations contained much of the same tools and materials as any auto racing pit stop. Often robot crews would need to make lightening fast adjustments to the bots to have them ready in time for a match.

Each year, VEX robotics creates different standards and scenarios for robotics tournaments. The idea is each team must construct a robot to carry out a list of specific tasks. The better the robot is at performing the various tasks, the more points a team is awarded.

This year, the robot teams were tasked with building a robot that was capable of picking up and tossing a frisbee disk into a basket. For every basket a robot successfully made during a match, the team received five points. The robots could also score a point by flipping roller bars to their team color. Each roller bar was worth 20 points.

Cathedral’s Overdrive team robot waits outside the pits before going into its next match.

Each match of the tournament had four teams competing. Two teams would collaborate for the individual match against another team of two.

The match started with an autonomous program. This tests a team’s ability to program a robot to act without direct control from the team. The rest of the match required team members to operate the robot with the controller.

At the end of the match, teams received extra points based on how many tiles an individual robot was touching. If a team was able to pilot the robot well, they could easily park it over the intersection of four tiles. Other inventive designers added special projectile attachments that could fire out an anchor and chain that covered even more tiles.

The actual robot matches were only half of the tournament. Judges were also evaluating the teams based on design criteria. Each team was required to keep a notebook logging all work done to their robot. Judges would also interview each team to evaluate communication skills and professionalism. Which teams were the best at communicating? Robots were also evaluated on the overall design. Is the robot durable and reliable in the field?

Several awards were given at the end of the tournament for the best teams in certain categories.

Staff photo by Clay Schuldt Cathedral’s Middle School Team, The Chill Hounds team up with a Mankato East team during and afternoon match.

The Build Award was given to Cathedral’s “Overdrive” team. The Build award is given to the team with the most robust robot and best communication skills. Overdrive took fifth in the competition, winning five out of six matches.

Overdrive team member Thomas Palmer said this year’s robotic competition was extremely unique. Palmer has been on the robotics team since 9th grade and believes this year’s competition had the most components.

“We’ve got to keep track of more things this year,” he said.

The team began designing and building their robot in August and the tasks it needed to do were more complex. Programming a robot to throw a disk requires a lot of programming variables to be accurate.

However, Palmer was excited that the team had access to new equipment to build the robot. The team has been working with pneumatic devices and pistons to drive the robot’s operation.

Each team faced the same challenges. Jackson Verschelde, an 11th-grade student from Mankato East said spacing and accuracy were the greatest engineering challenges this year. Verschelde was the controller for his team’s robot and his greatest concern was getting the bot to the right location. Programming a robot to throw a disk can be done, but placing it in the optimal position to throw is complicated; especially when an opposing team’s robot is fighting for the same spot.

The cathedral tournament featured seven judges; six of the judges worked for 3M and one worked with Mages Land Company. All were thoroughly impressed with the engineering feats of the student.

“The student’s dedication is strong,” Judge Matt Kukson said. “That’s what impresses me.”

Judge Jacob Gangelhoff was impressed by the ingenuity of the students. He liked how they could problem-solve and make an adjustment on short notice.

Judge Josh Catanach said the students’ technical knowledge was great, but this match by a strong ability to communicate with teammates.

Judge Matt Sporre was impressed with their ability to program these robots. The students were using advanced programming language to build the robots.

One of the 3M judges commented that he was uncertain that current 3M engineers could accomplish what these students were doing every day.

The high school robotics competition represents a generational shift. Even ten years ago, a high school robotics program was rare. The judges admitted that none of them had anything like it at their high schools. Many had to wait until college to learn the programming language that is now common in many Minnesota high schools.

This is the second time Cathedral has hosted a VEX robotics tournament, but similar tournaments are held all over Minnesota. Between 40 and 50 robotics tournaments are held in the state each year.

Cathedral Robotics coach Tim Watts said Cathedral teams typically attend four or five tournaments each year. He was pleased with the tournament turnout.

Tournament results are listed at robotevents.com under VEX Robot Competitions. This year’s tournament champion was a Technical Senior High School team from St. Cloud named “Tigris ex Machina VII”. The team won all six matches and received the Excellence award.

The Design Award went to a Mankato East Senior High team “8’nt My Fault”.

Cathedral’s Overdrive team won the Build Award.

The full tournament results can be found at robotevents.com.

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