Battle Of The Robots

Robots from around the region swarmed Ohio State University’s Newark campus Saturday.

Twenty-four teams representing Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia competed in the FTC tech robot challenge. Students in grades 7 through 12 along with independent teams spent months developing strategies and building their robots.

“Our robot is an offensive bot that’s main job is to try and pick up the scoring pieces and then grab onto the rolling goals and then the robot lifts up the hopper to drop the balls into the goal,” said competitor Blake Nischwitz.

Each year the FTC releases a new challenge for their robot competitions. Each team has about three months to tailor their bot to best meet the competition’s needs. Saturday’s activities included qualification matches, alliance selection, elimination’s, and final rounds. In the qualification rounds judges scored robots individually to decide if they would advance to elimination which for some is the most fun round.

“I’m really hoping that everything stays together. I’m hoping that we are able to score well enough to get into the elimination’s because their always a lot of fun,” said Nischwitz.

There are six qualifying tournaments like this one in Ohio. Top teams will advance to the State Championship held in Cincinnati on February 13th.