Robotics team brings home hardware

Last weekend, Thermopolis Robotics teams Fistful of Axles — 7283 and Aluminati — 4273 headed north to compete in the Montana State Championship.

Teacher, London Jenks, noted Aluminati came home from the event with a judged award — the Think Award. He explained this award is given to the team that “best reflects the journey the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season.”

Students keep a notebook recording their work, and that record’s engineering section is what judges base their decision on. The section must focus on the design and build of the robot, including descriptions of the underlying science and math of the design and game strategies.

Both teams’ robots worked well through the tournament, though there were some challenges. Aluminati had some issues with their autonomous code but were able to fix that through the matches. Another robot broke a claw on Fistful of Axles’ robot, so they had to do some repairs but were still able to compete.

At competition, each team has five qualifier matches, which helps to rank everyone. The top four teams then each pick two other teams for their alliances for the elimination rounds. The Thermopolis teams were not selected for the elimination rounds, Jenks said, and both would’ve like to place higher but they were happy to receive one of the judged awards.

Jenks said it was also nice to see Aluminati’s autonomous code work well. The code was designed for use with a color sensor. The robot had to detect the location of a red jewel vs. a blue one, knock off the opposing team’s jewel from a set platform and park in a specific area.

Following the running of the autonomous code in competitions, there is a couple minutes of driver control where students try to pick up and place various objects.

In two weeks, the teams will travel to Casper for the Wyoming State Championship, which is another chance for awards and to qualify for the Super Regionals, which encompasses the western U.S., at Spokane, Wash. If they win Super Regionals, they’ll head to the World Championship in Houston, Texas.

Jenks expressed his appreciation to the community for its support and sponsorships. “That’s the only way we can keep participating.”