MEQUON, Wis. — Mateo Reyes is a member of the Kraken Pinion robotics team at Homestead High School in Mequon.
He’s one of many high school students that took part in a 30-hour robot building challenge Saturday. The event brought in robotics teams from Mequon and Brookfield to compete with teams across the world.
Reyes said his first goal in the 30-hour robot building challenge was to dissemble other parts from past robots.
“It’s too large in which we won’t be able to move as fast, and our objective is to be as fast as possible,” said Reyes.
Right before the challenge began, the teams were instructed to build robots for a game called “Power Play.” It’s a game that tests for endurance, performance and efficiency of teams’ innovations.
(Spectrum News 1/Phillip Boudreaux)
The object of the game on Saturday was to place cones on pins throughout the field and create a path to the opposite side.
This is Reyes’ 2nd year competing in the challenge. He said he took a more active role in building for this competition after learning the ropes his freshman year.
“It’s trial and error because you build something and it doesn’t work, and then you are like, ‘we’ll see, how can I fix this?’” said Reyes. “And either you improve that design or you completely try a new design because your vision has changed over the course of the project.”
Thomas Winn was also competing in the challenge. He’s a member of the robotics team known as Gearheads from Brookfield. As a driver and mechanic for his team, Winn explained that problem-solving is a huge part of the appeal of robotics.
“You’re given a challenge each year, and what you have to do is that there is no real answer to the solution, so you just sort of have to create and think about what you can do to solve the challenge and be better than the other teams — and that’s what I love about robotics,” said Winn.
Dave Peterson, director of robotics for Homestead High School, said he believes there is a tremendous benefit for students that compete in this type of challenge early in the school year.
“Some of the teams will meet up to ten hours… but a lot of teams are meeting just up to four hours, so if you look at a 30-hour build challenge, that’s basically about seven weeks worth of work that they are going to compress down into a day and a half,” said Peterson. “So, these kids are going to come out of this and they are going to have so much more experience.”
(Spectrum News 1/Phillip Boudreaux)
Reyes admitted it was a bit of a struggle at the beginning of the challenge, but said he knew he and his teammates were up to the task of getting their robot ready to compete at a high level over the day.
“Everyone here is working towards one goal and really, you can just go up to anyone in here and ask for help, and it’s just really really amazing,” said Reyes.
Mequon and Brookfield are also partnering with robotics teams in Romania to build robots over one day that compete in the game of Power Play. Vancouver will also host scrimmages on Nov. 26 and 27.