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A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
The Barnum Bombtronics were hanging tough in the pits at the regional robotics competition in Duluth.
The drive team of Edward Stone, left, Lily Rosen and Miigwan Tanner-Wostrel intensely operate Cloquet's RipSaw robot Saturday morning in Duluth.
The old arena at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center, with two competition spaces, was packed with spectators and robot engineers as 120 schools participated during four days of activity at the regional competition, March 1-4.
Lily Rosen, Miigwan Tanner-Wostrel and Edward Stone focus intently on controlling the Cloquet RipSaw robot in the competition arena Saturday morning at the annual robotics competition in Duluth. The high school team of engineers competed with 120 other teams from across Minnesota and neighboring states in the three-day event that began Thursday.
Lucas Jurmu works on the SubZero robot with their Esko teammates Saturday morning. The team finished seventh in the 60-team regional.
In the alliance portion of the robotics competition, teams meld together and compete in the arena. Here, Daniel Heuring, left, of Eden Valley-Watkins talks strategy Saturday morning with Barnum's Dylan Wallace and Murray Salzer.
Robotics, where teamwork extends beyond the team.
They call it a robotics competition, but it's really a collaboration. It starts by entering events like last week's FIRST Robotics Regional Competition in Duluth. Team members had to work together to design a robot according to specifications outlined just a few short months ago, and it had to pass inspection before head-to-head scrambles in the arena began Thursday. For Cloquet's Ripsaw team, it also meant sharing a practice space in February with teams from the region to prepare for the specialized competition floor.
After the early rounds of manipulating robots to perform specific tasks on the floor, teams band together in alliances to really test those collaborative skills, often with strangers from a faraway school. For Barnum, that meant a meeting of the minds with students from Eden Valley-Watkins, a school southwest of St. Cloud and 134 miles away from Barnum.
Teams stop and start with the often finicky machines that take a beating in the competitions. It's the first time out for many of the 120 collected here in two regional groups of 60. Collaboration within the team is vital in the pits, where constant tinkering is done to get the machine just right.
Barnum coach Evan Lembke sounded like many of the area team coaches when it came to performances at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.
"We started and ended strong, but had some technical issues in the middle," he said.
The Bombatrons won three of its nine matches and finished 47th in the Lake Superior regional that included Cloquet, Carlton and Esko.
Carlton went 4-5 for a 35th-place finish. Cloquet was 1-8, for 57th place.
RipSaw member Grace Lavan said the team isn't discouraged. "We learn from each loss we take and without them we can't improve," she said. "Each busted bumper and bent claw inch us closer to success in the long run. We are proud that we made it through all nine of our competition matches without significant damage to our robot."
Esko was the top team from Carlton County, finishing seventh after going 7-2 in its nine matches.
After qualification matches, Esko reached the No. 7 spot. The team led the alliance matches with teams from Appleton, Wisconsin and the Automatons from St. Paul. The group won one of three matches, with losses to the top two alliances in the regional.
The team was pretty pumped after the regional and ready for more. "We are now making improvements to our robot as we prepare to compete at the Iowa Regional March 23-25," said coach Justin Scheider.
Moose Lake was in the Northern Lights regional, and finished 56th with one win in nine matches.
There are more regionals to come in neighboring states before the school year is out. And in the case of Cloquet, there was a real sign that the community is collaborating to strengthen the RipSaw program. The Northland Foundation announced this month that RipSaw received a $1,000 "Youth In Philanthropy" award "to support community outreach to young students interested in robotics and engineering opportunities."
In robotics, the collaboration never ends.
