by Darren Diekmann
news@thenewsleaders.com
Two teams from Sartell’s Boy Scout Troop 211 have qualified to compete in the VEX Robotics World Championship April 19-25 in Louisville, Ken.
The high school-aged team, called BeatBotz, earned its way to the world championship by placing first, and earning the Excellence Award at the state competition Feb. 3 and 4 at River’s Edge Convention Center in St. Cloud. In the middle-school competition, team Metal earned its way with a fourth place in the qualifying rounds and performed well in a separate skills field.
To get to state, a team must receive an invitation by competing well in an earlier tournament.
Neither team had trouble getting an invite.
“They are an amazing group of kids,” said Kevin Schatz, a troop leader and robotics coach. “Both teams have done well all year. The BeatBotz have won the excellence award and were tournament champions in several tournaments before state this year.”
The competition game for VEX Robotics changes every year. This year’s game is called Star Struck. The game consists of a 12-foot by 12-foot field divided by a two-foot fence. A team must maneuver their robots to pick up and throw objects over the fence. The objects are large stars, about 10 inches in diameter and made of foam, similar in shape to the small six-pronged stars in a game of jacks. There are also soft, one-foot cubes weighing about a pound. The objective is to put all the stars and cubes on the opponent’s side of the fence. This is what BeatBotz won at state.
The Excellence Award is given to the best all-around team, not necessarily the one who wins the main game competition. It’s given to the team who demonstrates the best skills in competition, engineering and programming as well as sportsmanship. It’s determined by a judge’s decision from observing the teams in competition and interviewing them about their engineering and programming process, Schatz said.
Considerable improvement by the Metal team in the last few weeks before the tournament resulted in a strong performance in a separate skills field that enabled them to qualify for the world championship, Schatz said.
The skills field is two parts: one minute of driving skills – operating the robot with a controller – and one minute of autonomous control skills, or programming.
“A few weeks before the state tournament, the middle school kids really spent a lot of time working on their autonomous program,” Schatz said.
The BeatBotz team is also strong in this area. “The high school has dominated the skills field all year,” Schatz said.
The Scout troop has been running teams for six years now, and last year the high-school team qualified for worlds. They were somewhat overwhelmed, but they were also inspired, Schatz said.
Also coaching alongside Schatz is Dave Ruder and helping out are Scouts Max Hennen and Eric Schatz. Members of the BeatBotz are Peter and Brian Amundson, Zach Christopherson, Josh Harrington, Colten and Talon Sigurdson, Callen Markey and Aaron Amberson.
Members of Metal are Caleb Skold, Matthew Ruder, Mark Amundson, Dylan Posch, Bobby and Thomas Burnett, Nick Joul, Quentin Sigurdson and Brian Klehr.
BeatBotz team robot captures two stars and a cube.
The middle school team Metal demonstrates its VEX robot.
