Weekend Robotics Competition

Katie and Steve and I spent Friday and Saturday in Ann Arbor at a District Robotics Competition. It's the first time that we have attended this type of event. A Kick-off is held in early January when everyone receives the rules and parameters of the current year's game. This is the animation of the game for this year. The teams have approximately 7 weeks to design, build, and program their robots. The robot is bagged up and teams are only allowed 6 hours to work on the robot between each competition.

These are a few of the robots that played in the competition. Each team purchases a kit of parts and then makess parts that will help the robot in the game.







Our team is wearing the white lab coats and royal blue shirts. Steve is the lab coat on the right, waiting for a ball to come through the goal. He had tried out and was selected as one of the human players for our team. Our team's robot is blue in this round and is directly in front of Steve.



This is our other drive team and student coach. Steve is again the human player in this match. He is standing closest to the camera.

During the competition, Steve struggled to get the other players to let him handle the trident (pole) due to his short stature. I was so proud when he stood up for himself. He reached the human player area first and grabbed the trident. When the other human players arrived they asked Steve to give one of the taller players the pole. Steve refused. It ended up being the highest scoring match of the day, with 9 goals scored for our alliance. Steve managed to get all the balls returned in a timely manner. After the match, the taller alliance players (from other teams) through Steve up in the air and caught him in their excitement. Steve had the biggest smile on his face when the match was done. Here are some photos of Steve using the trident.




Most of the teams struggled to get their robots to hang from the tower. One robot consistently hung from the tower in their matches throughout both days of competition. The design of this robot was amazing. The crowd cheered each time the team earned the two bonus points.



Katie was on the programing team and helped with some of the build. She didn't try out for any of the player positions. Instead, she and several other team members sat in the stands cheering for the various teams. Here are some shots of some of the supporters. Katie is wearing her lab coat. Madelyn (wearing green) is sitting with one of her friends. We all had a good time. Our team finished 23 out of 36. We are a fairly new team and learned a lot from this experience.





I knew that this was a wonderful experience for my kids, but I didn't realize that many teams have try-outs and interviews. Only top students are eligible to be members of many teams. The stadium was filled with wonderful kids having a blast.