A Saanich high school robotics team that recently won a B.C. provincial competition is gearing up to compete in the world championships for the second year in a row.
On April 17, the Reynolds Reybots team from Reynolds Secondary School is expected to fly to Houston, Texas to compete in the FIRST Championship, an international competition for youth robotics teams and a celebration of science, technology, engineering, and math.
So far this year, the team has been undefeated and they hold the record for highest score in B.C. and Yukon. In February, the team won the FIRST Tech Challenge Provincials in Surrey, which qualified them for the Houston championship.
“We’re feeling very excited, because we think that we actually have, like, a shot to do decently well this year,” said Briana Davis, a Grade 11 student, who also competed in Houston last year.
Over the year, students design, build, and program a robot to complete a set of tasks and challenges set out by the organizers. This year, robots are expected to pick up small pieces of plastic, carry them across the field and place them on a sloped backdrop.
“It’s a long process of looking at other people’s designs, imagining things, the kids put stuff on paper, we try and teach them to use [3D modelling software] so they can put it on the computer and spin it around in 3D and get the space constraints and see how things would work with physics and whatnot,” said Kas Karim, the team’s coach. “They see what doesn’t work, they redesign and so that whole period from September to now has been one long processes of designing, building, rebuilding, redesigning, re-imagining, and then the poor programmers are programming the whole thing as they go.”
Last year, the team competed in their first world championship and lost, but they now know what to expect and they now collaborate with teams from Brazil to Libya.
Joel Rider, also in Grade 11, said they have been better at distributing tasks to team members and the team has been more organized since the last season, but there is still uncertainty moving forward.
“There’s just so many other great teams that we really have no clue how well we’re going to do,” he said.
The team is fundraising for the trip and is holding a bottle drive in Saanich on April 6, along with a Gofundme page. To learn more or to donate, visit https://reybots.ca.
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