Starting in early January, the GHS Robovikes team received their assignment from The Midwest Regional First Robotics Competition. With a variety of challenges to complete, the build and design teams quickly got to work on the physical aspects while the coding team started to salvage the code from last year’s competition.

According to Jack Viebrock, the team’s administrative captain, GHS Robotics is “a club comprised primarily of kids interested in STEM who want to work on a team to better their skills in mechanical and electrical engineering, along with computer science.” For their competition, they have to complete a series of games and challenges with their robot in randomly assigned coalitions between several different teams. Some of the challenges this year range from picking out all of the yellow colored balls from a ball pit and lifting, carrying, and launching boxes.

With their competition from March 5th to March 7th and the end of build season quickly approaching, the team had switched into high gear, with all members on deck and fully active. The average meeting during the height of build season consists of a short discussion and briefing before the teams break up into their respective rooms in order to work on their sections. 

Lucas Anson, the team’s build captain, said that: “We haven’t done very well these last few years, but I feel that we are more prepared this year than ever before.” Hopes like this seem to resonate through the rest of the team, with code captain Ryan Klemm reiterating that “I feel we have a good chance to place well in this competition. We are more prepared than any other build season during my four years on the team.” Overall, it seems like the GHS Robovikes are headed for a hopefully successful competition with more confidence and certainty than the last several competitions.