by Tom Sasvari with files from Michael Erskine
MANITOULIN—Both the Manitoulin Secondary School (MSS) and Wiikwemkoong High School (WHS) robotics teams have won prestigious awards at competitions held this year. The MSS team qualified for the provincials having won the FIRST Impact Award at a McMaster University competition last weekend and an Inspiration Engineering award at a competition held the last weekend in March in North Bay. The young all-rookie WHS team, while not qualifying for the provincials won a prestigious award at a competition held in Barrie earlier this year.
“It has been a very emotional day,” stated Yana Bauer, one of the mentors of the MSS team Sunday night. “We won the FIRST Impact Award which is the most prestigious award at FIRST, it honours the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose of FIRST Robotics.”
“The FIRST Impact Award is presented to the team judged to have the most significant measurable impact of its partnerships among its participants and community over a sustained period, not just a single build season,” explained Ms. Bauer. “The winner is able to demonstrate progress towards FIRST’s mission of transforming our culture. The recipient is invited to a FIRST championship (in this case the provincials) where it competes for the FIRST Impact Award against winners from other qualifying events.”
Ms. Bauer said that the MSS team took part in the robot competition this weekend, and after the first day of competition, “we ended up 10th among the teams. Our team had to repair our robot (due to a problem with the robot arm), but the team never missed a match. On Sunday the team experienced more difficulties with its robot and its ranking in the standings dropped further, even competing in alliances with other teams. But they kept their energy up and continued to do our best and rebounded (from the difficulties).” In not qualifying to go on in the competition, “our team cheered on the other teams.”
“With the engineering inspiration award (the team won at its previous competition) we were going to the provincials to compete in this category, and now having won the FIRST Impact Award our robot will also be competing at the provincials. MSS finished 65th among the 80 teams in provincial rankings,” said Ms. Bauer.
“We participated in our first event of the season, the Nipissing University competition (held the last weekend in March) North Bay,” said Yana Bauer, a mentor of the MSS Manitoulin Metal 6865 Team, early last week. “It was a great event, and we had very modest expectations going in because this was this was the first time we had our robot in an event, the team robot drivers haven’t had much experience, compared to many other teams that have already competed this year.”
“We went in with the idea we were going to test things out and develop our robot strategies, to take pressure off the team so team members would not be disappointed if we didn’t do very well,” said Ms. Bauer.
Ms. Bauer acknowledged the MSS team didn’t do very well in its first match. “The robot actually tipped over in competition, so we had to do repairs, and received some help in this from the Loellen team on the programming side for the robot.” After the first day of the competition, MSS team was 15th place among the 28 teams taking part.
By Saturday, the second day of the competition “more things fell into place. Our robot ran better, and the team got better and were able to better our codes. Gradually the robot and the team were progressing,” said Ms. Bauer.
“In the afternoon several members of the team competed in the ‘Impact Award’ event, for science and technology, and some of our team made presentations to the judges. Two of our students also took part in Deans list interviews. In general, a lot of the competition judges came to talk to us, our team members and programs we are running, and things we do in the community with the team.”
“On Sunday we had a few more matches, and our team gained more confidence and had a solid performance,” continued Ms. Bauer. “When the round-robin competition ended, many teams wanted us to work with their team (in the next round of competition). This is the fifth year we have been in competition, and this was the first year this has ever happened. We didn’t expect to be chosen by other teams, and our team was ecstatic! Being in an alliance means we had made it, that the team is valued-that it can be an asset in an alliance with another team. It was a big deal,” she said. MSS partnered with C-4 a team from Arnprior and in another match with Atomic Dishwasher (A.D.), a team out of Owen Sound. It was really cool to be partnered with them and with A.D. we faced the number one seeded alliance team and almost beat them in the semi-finals. To be in an alliance and in the semi-finals and actually competing was a big thing for our team.”
When the awards were handed out after the competition, “our team received an Engineering Inspiration Award,” stated Ms. Bauer. “This award is presented for inspiring engineering in our school, community and with students in elementary schools. This is a huge award and was unexpected. The judges had interviewed our team members about our promotion work in the community, designing our robot and how the team promotes engineering at conferences and events. It means we will be vying for that award in the provincials.”
The MSS team was to take part in another regional event this weekend at McMaster University, and then will be taking part in the provincials in Hamilton April 5-8 at the First Ontario Centre.
“We won the judges award at the competition in North Bay,” stated Chris Mara, mentor of the Wiikwemoong High School (WHS 5672) robotics team. This is the eighth year of competition for the team. A group of 14 students travelled to Barrie’s Georgian College earlier this year and brought home significant honours with their robot Biabco Nimoosh 8.
“The theme for this year’s competition is ‘Energy and Sustainable Connections,’ said Mr. Mara. He explained at the competition in Barrie the field of battle was a giant charging station wherein the team and its autonomous creation was set to the task of making connections at set points.
“The design team worked really, really hard to generate an interpretation of the robot team in the pit,” said Mr. Mara. “The judges were very impressed with the images and Anishinaabemowin. It was very provocative.” So much so that the judges awarded the team the Imagery Award for their efforts. “People were stopping by and asking questions.”
In addition to providing the WHS students with an opportunity to showcase their STEM chops, the Wiikwemkoong team came back from their first competition tied in the ranks at 38th in the province, moving up four positions among the 198 registered teams. “Pretty good showing for an all-rookie team, we got to the alliance round and the elimination round.”
“When you think of the school population, there is a good percentage of students on the robotics team,” he said. “The students really represent their school well. There is a lot to take on.”
“Our team was not as strong as it was in Barrie,” said Mr. Mara. “The MSS team was incredible, winning the Engineering Inspiration Award. And they did really good in the field. We did better in part than we did in the Barrie event but did not qualify for the elimination round.”
The competitions are the culmination of nine months of work for the WHS team to build the various components with countless hours of extracurricular effort going into Biabco Nimoosh 8.
The new acronym replacing STEM is STEAM, that is science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics and the Wiikwemkoong team has strong representation in all categories. “They really took it up a notch,” said Mr. Mara. “The robot looks great, and the team has a newly designed T-shirt and the words that describe the robot and its activities.”
