EDSS robotics team takes first place in return to competition
Students were eager to get back into it, experiencing a nail-biter at UW
THE EDSS ROBOTICS
TEAM IS celebrating a very successful return to competition. The team took home first place at the FIRST Robotics competition held March 27 at the University of Waterloo.
“It was really exciting. We made it to the finals by winning our third game of a two-out-of-three series in the semifinals with a tie. And in the event of a tie, the team with the least amount of penalty points gets the win for the match and so we just squeaked into the finals,” said team member Felicity Frey.
“That was a very exciting moment for our team.”
The competition saw teams use their robots to shoot balls into an elevated goal, something that was challenging at the start, said Emma Cote.
“The robot just didn’t move during our first match. It was fine on the practice match, all the balls were going in, and our plan was working great. And then during the first match, the robot just didn’t move,” Cote said.
That plan has been in development since September, explained teacher Barbara Gaudet.
“The fall session is a lot of training. And so the build team learns how to use all the machines. And they do some prototyping of some designs. [First was] like, ‘we think it’s going to have to do with football,’ so they prototyped how to pick up a football and that sort of thing. The build team and the design team were learning how to do the CAD design and ... the business team was doing fundraising and learning how to communicate with sponsors, learning how to create an effective presentation,” Gaudet explained of the planning process.
“That’s so that everything is [prepared] for when [the competition] does actually get announced in January. It is a challenging, condensed schedule,” she said.
Gaudet’s husband Eric works in software engineering and is a volunteer with the team. He also emphasized the amount of work the students put in.
“On the software side, at least, you start from scratch with a lot of these students. You have 20 or 30 interested software students and we’ll go through some really quick basics because we have to go pretty fast. It is really rewarding to see how they start from nothing over the months and over the years. They really grow
into knowing what they’re doing taking a leadership role,” he said.
This year was even more challenging with COVID restrictions, Frey said.
“The main challenge was lack of time – we lost a lot of main build time when we lost the three weeks to lockdown. So as soon as we were out of lockdown, we rushed to get things done, and we worked really hard to get the robot ready for competition,” she said.
After qualification matches that saw them team up with Woodland Christian High School, and squeaking by the semifinals the team won the last two matches of the final to win the tournament.
“So, again, nail-biting,” Barbara Gaudet said.
The win shows the students that these things can come together and effort does get reward, said Eric Gaudet.
“We often say it’s not about the robot, it’s not about winning – it’s about the whole experience, but it really is nice to have all their efforts rewarded because it is a lot of work. Everybody puts in a ton of hours for this program . ... It’s a pretty big commitment for these students,” he said.