Students from Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School (PSO) are showcasing their skills at Canada’s largest high school robotics competition in Victoria this week (March 3 to 8). There are approximately 41 teams registered from as far as New Zealand.
“I am incredibly proud of these students and the skills they have shown in taking on this project,” said John Murray, the digital media teacher at PSO. “Each one of them is bringing a different effort to what we have created here.”
The team, called Roughneck Robotics, includes Kasper Hansen, Nathan Hollander, Jason Watkins, Cory Bougie, Ty Butler, Dallas Schroevers, Dirk Verheul, James Scarpino, Amber Siebert and Mickey Hannesschalger.
According to Murray, PSO is representing one of the smallest communities in B.C. at the competition.
“The team has been working on this since January,” said Murray. “It’s been a little difficult for us because we have never done anything like this before.”
Each team was responsible for its own fundraising efforts in order to enter the competition. Murray says the students raised over $12,500 to participate. With strict rules and limited resources, the students had to design, build and program to perform a series of tasks.
“The robot has to be able to shoot dodgeballs at targets, lift its self off of the ground and spin a dial to land on a specific colour,” said Murray.
According to team member Nathan Hollander, the group has put in over 40 hours to build the robot since January. He says it has been a series of trials and triumphs.
“The best part was when we got the robot to move for the first time,” said Hollander. “The worst part has been learning to program and getting it to work. We’ve never used any sort of program language, so it’s brand new to us.”
This will be the first time PSO has ever competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition.
“We are the first in our entire district to ever do this,” said Hollander. “No matter how it goes this week, it’s going to be fun.”
