January 21, 2015 at 1:43 p.m.
Robo-Hodags fall in Hortonville, won't make it to Milwaukee
Robo-Hodags fall in Hortonville, won't make it to Milwaukee
After placing second in the First Tech Robot Challenge in Milwaukee two years ago - the team's first year in existence - and coming in fifth last year, the Robo-Hodags were planning for their third trip to state.
In previous years, the team automatically qualified for the state competition. This year, the team and its custom-built robot had to make it through a qualifying competition Saturday in Hortonville in order to make it to Milwaukee.
"(Hortonville is) one of the regional competitions and if you place high enough, then you go to the state competition in Milwaukee," Wojtusik said in an interview before the tournament.
"We've always gone right to Milwaukee, but this year they're having qualifying matches because there are so many clubs around now. There are so many teams applying for the competitions now."
While the team "performed very well," part of the competition involved the group teaming up with other robots. Those robots didn't perform to expectations, leaving Rhinelander without enough points to continue to Milwaukee.
"Our students and robot performed very well. Of the 24 (robots) that were there, we scored the second highest number of points collectively during the five matches. Only one other robot was more efficient than (ours) at completing the difficult challenge. That can be attributed to a solid robot design, great programming, and persistent students," Wojtusik said Monday morning.
"However, as luck would have it, our alliances, the robots we were paired with, did very poorly. In fact, in three of our five matches, our alliance had 0 points where we would typically be scoring 80 to 130 points per match. We did ultimately win three out of the five matches, but as a result of the weak alliances, we were unable to gain qualifying points to make it to state."
Teams from three other states - Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois - joined Wisconsin schools in Hortonville. The additional competition didn't worry the Robo-Hodags. In an interview before the competition, team members said they were excited to see how their newest creation would stack up against robots from around the Midwest.
"We're just trying to build off what we've done in previous years. Especially when we finished second, we saw a lot robots with top-of-the-line, new, industrial-strength parts and we had duct tape and makeshift buckets that we welded in the shop," senior Kenny Routheaux said.
"We did pretty well with all that and we learned a lot and now we're excited to see what this one can do."
Especially the first year, but the second as well, the team got a late start building its robot.
That wasn't the case this year.
"We're sitting better this year than we were last year," Wojtusik said. "Last year, we were still building it on the way down on the bus."
"We didn't get it working until the night before," senior Sam Hext added. "Actually it was more like the morning of (the competition). We were still making adjustments in the hotel right before the competition."
While the team and its robot are in better shape than last year, that doesn't mean there weren't last-minute tweaks. It's common practice to make changes and adjustments on the fly during the competition.
"If you look at the video last year, each game you could see we were progressively getting better and fixing things," Routheaux said.
An earlier start building the robot helped, too.
"It was the middle of October, sometime around that area that we started," Wojtusik said. "It's been later in previous years, so that helped."
A total of 13 high school and middle school students are involved in the club this year.
A new outline is created each year for the competitions.
Last year, the robot had to pick up blocks to be placed in boxes positioned on a teeter-totter before heading to a corner of the arena to raise a flag. This year, the robot was required to sweep up balls to be put in long, vertical tube. The robot also had to ascend a ramp.
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
Comments:
You must login to comment.