At the first competition, nothing went right.
The six members of the Mecha Hamster, a homeschool robotics team based in Greenwood, brought their robot out, but the robot was not performing like they needed it to.
They only had two chances to qualify for state. And in this one bad run, they were seeing their chances slip away, said Bethany Lengacher, a junior Mecha Hamster member.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryAfter their disastrous run at their first competition, they sat down and discussed what they would do with the month between competitions.
The group decided to soldier on and have now not only made it to state, but, in their last competition, qualified for the Super Regional.
The Green Machine team based out of Greenwood Community High School also earned a bid to state, as did teams from the middle schools at Center Grove.
Teams have to place among the top teams at several events across the state in order earn bids to state. All teams registered in the event received the task in September and had to build their robot from scratch to compete against other teams. They will compete this weekend.
After the Mecha Hamsters first run, they knew something had to change, Lengacher said.
They built their robot to concentrate on the autonomous portion of the competition. More points could be earned during the first 30 seconds of the competition, where student engineers program their robot to do a task on their own.
That strategy is what the Green Machine at Greenwood Community High School used too, junior Collin Graber said.
“In this year’s game, you can score a lot of points in 30 seconds,” he said. “You can perform a lot of tasks during that autonomous period.”
This strategy helped the Mecha Hamsters at their second competition until an internal hardware system on the phone strapped to their robot malfunctioned, making them lose a run in that first competition.
“We were totally demolished in competition,” she said.
Then a team they were aligned with did really well. And when their engineering notebook was handed over to judges, they were able to see how they fixed their bad runs and the internal thinking that went into fixing their robot.
Based off of that, they were awarded the Inspire Award, which not only earned them an automatic bid to state, but will allow them to compete in the Super Regional, Lengacher said.
Now they are focusing their efforts on making sure that another issue such as what happened at their competitions doesn’t happen again, she said.
Greenwood Community High School robotic team members have upped the amount of practice they have been doing to get ready for state competition, said Chris Campbell, adviser to the Green Machine.
Members of the Green Machine received their instructions for the project last fall, along with other teams competing, he said.
Students then built their robot from scratch, using a bin of parts, Campbell said. Members typically get their task and immediately try to build a robot that will earn points in what the team believes is the best way possible, he said.
“It is problem solving, they have to figure it out and sketch ideas,” said Campbell.
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Here is a look at two robotics teams going to state this weekend.
<p style="text-align: center"><strong>Green Machine from Greenwood Community High School.</strong></p>
Members:
Brandon Albin, Tatiana Andrade, Chris Ashmore, Cameron Beach, Collin Graber, Micah Hoffman, Braxton Laster, Paul Lungaard, Ethan Pine, Evan Pine, Ivy Rimer, Jonah Roleson, Hunter Ross, Jonathan Schleiter, Edward Simpson, Alex Vuong, John Waldschmidt and Isaac Welliver.
<p style="text-align: center"><strong>Mecha Hamster, homeschool team based in Greenwood</strong></p>
Jake Lengacher, Claire Alte, Cole Nemeth and Bethany Lengacher, Laura Fundenberger and Nathan Bryan.
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