Students compete in global robotics competition in Vancouver

Alberta students recently took their star basketball player – a robot – to Vancouver for its first competition. CTV News Edmonton’s David Ewasuk has more.

Students at Fort Saskatchewan High School travelled to Vancouver earlier this month to see how their robotics skills stacked up in a global competition.

As part of the FIRST Robotics Competition, students were challenged to build an industrial-sized robot using a predetermined parts kit which then had to compete in robo-sports.

“The students get about as real-world of an experience as possible, they get something different than what would normally be done inside the classroom,” said Rick Kobylnyk, a robotics teacher at Fort Saskatchewan High School.

“We are looking at absolute real-time engineering, we are looking at real-world problems, solving issues under tight time constraints and very tight budgets, and integrating with other teams and being able to work among multiple teams from all over the world at one competition.”

Not only do teams have to design and build the robot, they also have to manage financial and marketing challenges.

“We have students who have participated in our teams who have become engineers, chartered accountants … computer scientists, professors, teachers,” said Kobylnyk. “The list goes on and on.”

Students had six weeks to build their robots before flying to Vancouver for the competition. There were teams from Canada, the U.S., China, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Teamwork and cooperation, including between different teams, is encouraged in the competition, something members of Fort Saskatchewan’s Sting Robotics Team enjoy.

“You can’t make a robot with just one person.This entire situation that we have going on is just the best way to … build this community and make friends, friends with common interests that can just make life overall better,” said John Datu, a Grade 12 student.

“The warmth of the atmosphere, how welcoming everyone is to new people. It’s an incredible feeling,” said Evan Cooper, another Grade 12 student.

The Fort Saskatchewan team placed 33rd out of 44 teams, but Kobylnyk said their robot received notice and praise.

“A lot of the teams did notice that our robot, despite that placement, had very good attributes and had decent reliability, which made the team very desirable to other teams,” Kobylnyk.

As part of an alliance, the Fort Saskatchewan team did get to participate in the playoffs before being eliminated in the sixth round.

“It went much better than previous years, we performed exceedingly well,” Cooper said.

“We tried to simplify systems … we focused slightly less on overall design and more on quality and speed of production.”

Seven members of this year’s team will be graduating in the spring, but at least two will be returning as coaches and mentors for next year’s squad, according to Kobylnyk.

“A lot of (students) have said to me multiple times that it was some of the best experiences that they had during their high school career,” Kobylnyk added.