Warsaw Robotics Team Qualifies For State Competition
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
After four years of trying to get a robotics team to qualify for state competition, a Warsaw Area Career Center team did just that Saturday at the Warren VEX Toss Up qualifier. Junior Grant Monsma and sophomore Patrick Mosher will compete at the state contest in March, with location to be determined. The top 16 teams at state will qualify for world competition, which will be in April in California. Forty-eight teams will compete at the state level for that chance. “We’ve been working hard to build a strong robotics team for the past three to four years. It’s quite an accomplishment for this team to represent Warsaw at state. I’m very impressed with their hard work and problem-solving skills they’ve utilized,” said WACC engineering and technology teacher and robotics co-coach Abbi Richcreek. This was Warsaw Robotics’ fourth competition for the VEX qualifiers for the season. The other co-coach is Paul Zakaria, WACC engineering and technology teacher. Warsaw took four teams to Indianapolis for Saturday’s competition. In the competition, the robots’ objective is to score as many points as possible by putting balls into a bucket with their robot. There also is an autonomous part of the contest the robots must complete. At Saturday’s tournament, more than 60 teams duked it out until there were eight teams left. The top eight teams then competed against one another, but each team picks two other teams – not already in the final eight – to be in their alliance for the duel. The top team, along with the two alliance teams it picked, qualified for state competition. “Near the beginning, our robot didn’t do too well,” said Mosher. “The autonomous kept screwing up so we had a dead robot on the field.” “We did get it fixed though, and we came up with a strategy with the top team in the field, and together we did extremely well,” Monsma stated. The top team were homeschooled students from Indianapolis. When they got into the top eight, they picked Monsma and Mosher for one of their alliance teams. The other team in the alliance was from Jay County. Their strategy centered around the autonomous part of the contest. In that, the robots have a 15-second time period to operate and react only to sensor inputs and to commands pre-programmed by the team into the onboard control system. “Since the autonomous time can give you a 10-point bonus, it can make or break the game,” said Monsma. “During the autonomous, we were able to get the field ready so as soon as the autonomous was done, we were able to pick up all of our balls and score immediately.” Mosher took a picture of the final scoring chart, which read 40-12. “This is a first,” he remembered thinking. “Since this is the first time any Warsaw team made it, we were pretty excited,” Monsma added. Both students agreed their hard work over the season paid off. Mosher gave Monsma credit for being the main operator and leader behind the robot. Mosher said he was surprised how the number one team at the contest picked them because they were ranked 25th in the competition at the time. “It was very tense all the time,” Monsma said. “We had technical issues so we weren’t ranked as high as we should have been.” “There were several times when we thought we’d lose or get knocked out, and something would happen and we’d get to continue on,” Monsma added later. Mosher said it was a very exhausting day. He fell asleep on the bus on the way home. But, he said, “It was fun.” They’re already preparing for state competition. Mosher said they’re going to heavily modify their robot. Monsma said they will make it more efficient and faster. Mosher said they hope they can add new sensors and parts, but that will take money. Both agreed they have a good chance of making it past state to world competition. “Very great,” Monsma said. “There are maybe like 10 robots or so that are the best 10 that I would expect to see at world. We are one of those 10.”
