Annual robotic competition kicks off at Hunter High School

High school students from all over Utah gathered together to kick off the 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition at Hunter High School on Jan. 7. This is the second year Hunter has hosted the Utah kickoff event which brought together 18 teams to learn about this year’s game and to receive their robot kits.

Scott Watson oversees the team from Hunter and also hosted the kickoff event.

“These robots take an amazing amount of work to build and program the robots,” he said. “It’s impressive what these kids can do.”

This year, the robots will compete in the Rebound Rumble robotics game at the regional competition on March 15-17 at the Maverick Center. The game is played between two alliances with three teams each. Teams try to score as many basketballs in different hoops as possible during the two-minute, 15-second match. Watson said the games are always unique and have aspects of familiar games.

The robot building season lasts six weeks. Teams spend the first three weeks building the robots and getting them ready for the competition. The last three weeks are spent testing the robots and working out the bugs. A testing facility is set up at the University of Utah for teams to test the robots.

Watson said it’s a good opportunity for teams to see what’s working and what still needs to be fixed.

Student teams are responsible for taking the kits and constructing a robot. During the kickoff event, many of the teams spent the day brainstorming and starting the construction process, which takes about four to six hours to complete, Watson said.

“These robots are built entirely by the kids. Engineers and parents are on hand to offer advice, but we don’t direct them, even when we know something they are doing is going to fail,” he said. “Sometimes I have to go take a walk when my team is trying something I know won’t work. Trying something and failing at it is the only way they will be able to learn what works and what doesn’t.”

The kickoff event featured robot demonstrations and provided rookie teams the opportunity to start building their robots with help from more experienced teams, like Hunter’s team. Watson said Hunter didn’t start building its robot Jan. 7 but mingled with the other teams and helped out.

Ryan Fenner is a senior and has been part of the FIRST Robotics competition for the last three years. He attributes the popularity of this contest to new advances in technology and the ability for high school students to be involved in building something better than the last year. The testing period is an important part of the program, he said.

“If everything goes good, I’m excited to test it out,” Ryan said. “Last year, we had to fix a lot of things during the testing period, so it wasn’t as much fun. We’re going to be looking at different things to figure out a way to accomplish the task. I hope we are in the top half this year.”

Winning teams from the regional event will go on to the national championship held in St. Louis, Miss. April 25-28.