The take over was part of CHS’s sixth annual robotic tournament. The competition featured over 30 teams from schools across southern Minnesota. New Ulm Area Catholic Schools had four teams compete in the tournament; three from the high school; Overdrive, Jackpot Jokers, Gear Shifters and the middle school team, Night Hounds.

Each year, the VEX robotics league creates a new competition for robotics teams. The idea is each team must construct a robot to carry out a list of specific tasks. This year’s game was called “Push Back.”

The robots competed to pickup and push foam blocks into scoring baskets or tubes. Robots could also play defense, by pushing a blocks out of the scoring zone.

Overall the push back competition was popular with the different teams. Braden Boyle with Overdrive teams said it made for a fun competition season.

The Night Hounds robotics team adds coolant and test connections to their robot between rounds at Cathedral High School’s Robotic Tournament, Saturday. In Photo L to R: Blaise Krueger, Jack Peterson and James Beranek.

Andrew Bentler said the benefit of the Push Back competition is gave the teams greater range for designing their robot.

“We’re not locked into one style,” he said.

Overdrive decided to maximize the amount of blocks their robot can hold at one time by going with an “S” design.

Bentler explained the “S” design offered more room in its pick track than the “C” design. In addition, the “S” design allowed the robot to push the block out from the front or back, giving it greater scoring opportunities.

The Gear Shifters team took a different approach.

Cathedral High School’s Jackpot Jokers’ robot places two red blocks in the top goal. The blocks must remain in the center of the goal to score points.

“We do well on defense,” Emmett Gaalswyk said. “It is difficult to push our bot around.”

Peyton Weisbrich said Gear Shifters robot was just withing the maximum size limit, which made it good at blocking other bots, but it could still score points on its own.

Weisbrich said she preferred the push back game. It was a more straight forward competition but still required a team to develop a strategy.

Augustin Pekrul with the Jackpot Jokers said their robot was not design to be good at once specific task. As the driver of the robot, Pekrul said he tries to maximizing scoring on the high box for more points, but their robot does have defense abilities.

The youngest NUACS team taking part in the competition were the Night Hounds. James Beranek said they were the only NUACS middle school team competing in robotics this year. Beranek said Night Hounds also tried to score on the high goal as much as possible.

Cathedral High School robotics team, Gear Shifters, work on their robot during Saturday’s tournament. The Gear Shifters designed their robot around defense. In photo L to R: Emmett Gaalswyk, Peyton Weisbrich and Aaron Beranek.

Beranek said the hardest part of the competition was the autonomous round. Each match in the tournament begins with robots being set on driver-less mode, also known as autonomous mode. This tests a team’s ability to program a robot to act without direct control from the team. The autonomous round all comes down to coding.

Beranek said for the Night Hounds it was a difficult task to program a robot for autonomous driving since he and his teammates were all first time coders, but said there were people willing to help at the tournament.

“Its great having the older students here to help,” Beranek said. “There available to help us solve problems.”

Hudson Long, a student on Mankato West’s “Chaos” team agreed the autonomous programming was the hardest part of competition. Though his team’s robot performed relatively well under the driver-less competition he said it struggled with consistency.

Long said the main goal of programming is to be consistent.

Two members of the Night Hounds robotic team troubleshoot their robot’s performance with help from the Mankato West’s Chaos team before the next round in the tournament.

“The bot needs to be able to do it right every time,” he said.

NUACS Robotics Coach Amber Bentler said the school’s robotics team had shown great success in the years since it started. A NUACS robotics team has made it to the state competition every year for the last seven year and has attended the World’s Competition five times.

Bentler said the success of the school’s robotics program was thanks to the students.

“Robotics is a student powered program,” she said. “It all comes down to the time they put into it.” Over the last seven years, NUACS robotics teams have consistently showed dedication.

Bentler said one of the benefits of the robotics competition is it exposes students to valuable skills.

“The skills they are learning in robotics will serve them for life,” Bentler said. “They are learning to code, but they are also learning to work as a team.”