Calgary based robotics team heading to world event in Houston

Close to 100 robotics school and community teams went head to head in a provincial tournament, and it was a Calgary team that came out on top.

A group of Calgary students who build robots for fun are heading to Houston to compete in world championships.

The 10015 HyperDroids is a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team made up of eight local students who share a common interest in STEM and robotics.

The robot they built came in first at the Alberta provincial tournament and that’s earned them a spot in Houston, Texas at the FTC World Championship for the second year in a row.

“This is my third year with the team as a mentor and watching them go from understanding how a drill works up to completely custom fabricating a robot from scratch is pretty cool,” said Mike Warren, lead mentor.

“Everyone kind of does a bit of everything,” Warren added, “but I do have a drive team that that practices and drives the robot, I have a pit crew so at tournaments they’re the ones responsible for making sure the robots running 100 per cent.”

Intense competition

Warren said competition was intense at this year’s provincial tournament because at this level of robotics, there are close to 100 teams.

“We basically gained 25 teams this year for FTC alone in Alberta,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest -- I’ve had tons of students ask me ‘how do I get on this team?’

“We’ve got a pretty big waitlist for our team here.”

Grade 11 student Carter Shaw, who is 16, is the oldest member of the HyperDroids and was at last year’s world event. The team placed somewhere in the middle of more than 250 teams at the event, but Shaw said it was exciting nevertheless.

“It’s such a grand experience, there’s so many teams, there’s so much going on,” he said. “And it’s really cool to meet people from all over the world who are all there for robotics, they’re all there for the same reason and you don’t realize the scale of robotics until you’re there.”

Shaw is from Nanton and makes the commute in to Calgary and the Alberta Tech Alliance Association (ATAA) facility the team uses to meet and build their robot.

“I’m not a fan of traditional sports,” he said. “I’m not a very active person and I live in a small town, I’m the only one on my team that drives a long way to get here and so there’s nothing like this (in Nanton) and I’m a minority in my town -- and when we discovered this, I was really wanting to do it because of what I can learn here.”

Mahie Kainth, 13, enjoys STEM activities and is proud to be one of the girls on the HyperDroids and she gets to drive the robot and control an extendable arm.

“The drive team works really close with everybody else on the team,” she said. “If something is not right with the robot, we can talk to the programing team or the mechanical team and then they’ll look at it and fix it for us.”

Kainth says the robot has specific tasks it has to perform autonomously and by the drive team picking up a series of blocks.

“When the robot grabs that, we have to move the arm up and place it into a basket,” she said. “Next we can grab a colored piece and take it to the human player who puts a clip on it and then we hang it on the bar.”

Tirth Shah, 13 years old has found his niche with this team.

“I got to meet a community I enjoy,” he said. “I really enjoy robotics and seeing other people from around the world that have the exact same interest as me is really like, so enthusiastic.”

Shah works with the drivers to be another set of eyes for them during competitions.

“My favorite part about the robot has to be like the camera at the front on the arm and the wrist,” he said. “Because our first design was just a simple model that didn’t have any spinning function, just a wrist and then a claw.

“Now we added a palm with the camera inside of it,” Shah added, “and then a servo that can spin the wrist with a claw as well so it can pick up things from any orientation and there’s a camera that can sense the pieces automatically and in autonomous, it’s really helpful.”

The members pay a fee to be on the team that covers costs of the build space, equipment and robot parts. Sponsorship helps cover some of the expenses.

But going to the world tournament has many more additional costs with a US$3,500 entrance fee, meals and accommodations and cost to ship the robot and parts to and from Houston.

Now the team is asking for help.

“We put up a GoFundMe page so that you can support us,” said Anjalika Consul, 15 years old. “We’re really excited to go to worlds and although we’re very excited, it does cost money so any bit that you can contribute really helps.

The team leaves for Houston on April 15 for five days. Learn more about the team and fundraiser here.