Robotics Team Competes at Fort Hays University
March 26, 2024
Monday March 25th, our Ness City Robotics team of Dracen Weeks, Kori Whited, Kale Bishop, and Sam Liggitt competed at the Fort Hays State University Lego Robotics Competition. This competition challenged teams to create autonomous robots for various challenges that included Sumo Bots, Color Sorting, Line Follow, Maze Running, and a Catapult.
Maze Running required students to design and program a robot to self navigate through a maze in the quickest time possible. Ness City completed this challenge, however, we did not place in the top five.
Line Follow required students to design and program a robot to follow a line from start to finish while avoiding an obstacle placed in its path. Unfortunately, our robot got caught in a logic loop at a particular turn that we knew we had a 50/50 shot of getting right which caused us to receive a no score.
Sumo Bots was the highlight of the event where students designed a robot to push other robots out of a ring. The format was single elimination march madness bracket style. Ness City designed a robot that used down gearing to get more traction and power at the cost of speed. Ness City was able to make it past the second round, but got pushed out of the ring in the 3rd round. The kids enjoyed this event and already are planning future designs to overcome the design flaws of this year’s sumo bot.
The Catapult event required teams to redesign their mobile robots into a stationary robot that launched ping pong balls at a stack of cups between 1 m to 2 m in distance. Ness City was able to design a catapult that was capable of knocking down 5 of 10 cups, but did not score any points due to a rules oversight by our team.
The Color Sorting Challenge required students to design and program a robot to drive along a line sorting red and blue M&M’s. Red was sorted to the right and blue to the left. Ness City performed once again tremendously at this challenge receiving a perfect score in the quickest time of the entire event scoring a first place finish. Ness City’s design was complex utilizing a funnel blade to guide the M&M’s toward the color sensor of the robot which operated a second blade which pushed red M&M’s to the right and blue M&M’s to the left. The robot had the appearance of a cross between a road grader and street sweeper. According to Dracen, “we put the color sensor on the bottom of the robot to help sort each color. It is a lot harder than it sounds because our color sensor is not the best."
This is Dracen’s 2nd year of robotics. He started as a 7th grader because “I like robots and we get to skip a day of school!” His favorite competition is the Sumo Bots. These are programmed differently as they must stay within a “taped off area” and “identify and attack the opposing robot. Parts do fly off!”
Ness City’s MS robotic team tied for second with a couple other teams overall in the FHSU Lego Robotics Competition. Mr. K was very proud of his team and the work that his students put in leading up to the competition.
