One student checks a connection with a voltmeter. As he does so, a robot moves across the floor and fires a foam ball into the air.
“I'll be honest. I am quite nervous. It's pretty competitive,” Lincoln Russell, the Robotics team leader and a Grade 11 student at YRHS, said.
The event has strict standards on how the competition robots should function. Students must construct a radio-controlled robot, or pair of robots, to attempt to move the most foam balls into an opposing team’s area.
Students have built, and rebuilt every aspect of the robots themselves.
“We've gone back to the drawing table and refreshed every idea that we've had [probably] at least six times,” Russell said.
“We had to flip the whole chassis pretty much because it was way too tall,” team member MacKenzie Kwens said.
For instructor Andrew Pearce the building—and rebuilding— is a vital process to developing a very important skill.
“Improvisation [is the focus] more than anything else,” Pearce said.
He says that he’s seen improvements in both the robots and his students, noting that their confidence “around the tools and the stuff that they're working with” has greatly improved.
However, what they’re working with most, even more than the robots, are their teammates.
“I mean, I wasn't friends with these people. I didn't know who they were,” Russell said. “And after this, I feel very close to them and I can approach them with my ideas.”
The competition takes place on April 11 in Saskatoon. The robotics club, an extracurricular activity, will meet most evenings and even weekends until then.
That work ethic is also something for which Pearce is happy his students have learned.
“Just knowing that they can put the work in and get something out is huge.”
