The robots took over Barrie’s Georgian College campus this weekend, at the FIRST Robotics competition.
Thirty-one teams of secondary school students from across Ontario competed using robots they designed, built, programmed and tested.
One team came from St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic High School in LaSalle, near Windsor.
Their robot is named Proton, and he can do plenty.
“We have the arm on top so we’re able to grab the inflatable cubes, or a cone, place them off into the end stands,” explained Gerry Kwiatkowski, mentor for the 35 students who designed, built and fund-raised for Proton and his nearly $6,000 worth of materials.
“It also has an autonomous feature which allows us to drive up onto this platform that can tilt, level itself automatically, so it always adjusts itself back and forth, and once it gets level we set out a brake system that holds us onto it - so if another robot comes on board we don’t slide off.”
And what does Proton need all of these functions for?
Every match at the competition is done with a team of three robots per side, said Kwiatkowski, so six robots are together in the field at the same time.
“We have to work together to score points on the field, either by picking up cones at the other end of the field or these inflatable cubes, running them across the field and then we have to place them in specific spots on the field,” he said. “The cone only can go in the posts, shelves can only take a cube, and if we get three of them in a horizontal row, you get extra points.
“So we’re always running back and forth across the field, grabbing parts. You can only carry one object at a time. It’s part of the rules,” Kwiatkowski said. “The more we get on there, the more rows we make, the more points we get, and then at the end we have to be able to go onto this tilting table, they call it the charge station, and balance it out. As many robots as we can get on top and make it balanced.”
Kwiatkowski said Proton is mostly aluminum, although there’s a great deal of electronics inside it, along with different types of motors, drives, even a gyroscope sensor, like a car.
Proton and St. Thomas of Villanova were ranked 15th in the competition, which has a theme of ‘Charged Up’, as of early Sunday afternoon.
For results and more information, visit firstroboticscanada.org .
