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West Robotics Team Places 2ndAt Areawide Botball tournament
The Hazelwood West High School robotics team shows off their second place Botball trophy, certificates and their robots, Scheidker’s Rage and Scheidker’s Fury. The team journeyed to the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville for the regional competition. Front row, left to right, senior Corbin LeGrand, freshmen Ryan Hartsock and William Iwasko. Back row, left to right, West robotics sponsor, science teacher Melissa Dickson, seniors David Dotson and Chris Ziegler and junior Chris Scheidker.
A final attempt to tie for first almost worked in the Wildcats’ favor as the first Greater St. Louis Botball Regional competition ended, but despite their inventiveness and resolve, the team finished in second place overall out of 11 teams.
Six students from Hazelwood West High School traveled to the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville for the recent competition – team captain senior David Dotson, freshmen Ryan Hartsock and William Iwasko, senior Corbin LeGrand, junior Chris Scheidker and senior Chris Ziegler. The school’s robotics team sponsor, science teacher Melissa Dickson, accompanied them.
The Hazelwood West robot duo was named in honor of Scheidker – Scheidker’s Rage and Scheidker’s Fury.
“It was very, very surprising to us because we are a first-year team,” Dotson said. “We had never done anything with Legos and we were in kind of a rush at the end of the competition.”
The Lego pieces used are not the standard type but Technical Legos. “We had to learn what was available and how to make it work,” Dotson said. “We had to decide what we should use and what we should not use. Our work came about through trial-and-error.”
Strategy is a major component of botball as teams try to thwart their competitors and gain more points for themselves.
Created by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics in Oklahoma, Botball is a hands-on learning experience in robotics, designed to engage students in learning the practical applications of science, technology, engineering and math.
It challenges middle and high school students to design, build and program two mobile yet autonomous robots that cooperate during the tournament to score points. A workshop held in advance provides the equipment, software and information and then the students have about seven weeks to get their creations from imagination to reality.
Unlike other robotic events, such as the FIRST Robotics Challenge, Botball robots are completely autonomous. They rely on computer programming to start, maneuver and stop with no human intervention. On-board sensors in the robots detect changes in light, sound, distance and color.
In this year’s game, teams had to work fast to prepare their ‘island’ from certain destruction as a nearby volcano ‘erupted.’ The robots had to harvest pineapples, compost leaves and place roofs on houses plus clear lava in 90 seconds or less. ‘Fury’ and ‘Rage’ had to lift and grasp furry balls, pieces of PVC piping and drop small umbrellas. (story courtesy of Hazelwood District Communications Dept.)
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