The Park City High School Robotics Club on Saturday hosted 20 other teams from around the state to test their engineering and collaboration skills in the last event before the state championship on Friday in Cedar City.
Fifteen Park City students across four teams competed. In the final round, the PC Robominers and the Aviators competed together as a joint team, and they placed second overall. Beehive Academy in Sandy took home the championship trophy.
The rules stipulated specific tasks for each “bot,” as the students called them, to accomplish within a two-and-a-half minute period. The match was conducted on a 12-foot square playing field, and the robots were required to achieve the tasks automatically while their humans stand and watch for the first 30 seconds.
Then, the human drivers take over and collect as many plastic blocks, or “samples,” as they can and place them in specified baskets.
Janlynn Robertson is the volunteer coach for the five Park City teams. She said that one of the competition’s purposes is to encourage teams to work together in a collaborative alliance.
“During competition, you are randomly allianced with another team, so it’ll be four teams in a two-on-two (arrangement) against each other,” Robertson said. “Because it’s random alliances, you never know who your alliance partner is going to be in one match, and then in another match they will be your opponent.”
This addresses one of the key educational goals of the robotics clubs across the state: teaching kids to be collaborative and learn consensus building with peers — and total strangers.
The robots, software, computers and parts cost about $5,000 each. Park City Education Foundation and private donors provide the funding for the local clubs.
