Dover Bay Secondary School’s Robotics Club students have stick-handled their way, so to speak, to the Skills Canada National Competition 2023.
The nationals will be held in Winnipeg from May 25, 26.
Marina Pelletier and Xiaorui Liu, operating two remote controlled robots, went undefeated in rounds of robotic ball hockey during the regionals competitions in Nanaimo in March to land a spot in the provincials at the Abbotsford Trade Exhibition Centre, April 19.
Because Pelletier and Liu are the robot operators, their names are registered for the competitions, but an entire team of students – Rhys Arden, Mark Ratzlaff, Scott Wiebe, Colby Lawson, David Liu and Haitao Xiao – are behind the designing, building and programming of the robots.
The robots perform in an arena where they collect hollow rubber balls from a tube and load them into a mechanism that upon command, drops a ball in front of a hockey stick blade that, hopefully, slaps it into their opponent’s goal net.
The team with the most robustly constructed robot and skilful driving scores the most points to win the game. Dover Bay’s ‘shooter’ robot design has proven particularly successful, especially against local rival Wellington Secondary School’s entry.
“In just Nanaimo-wide, we beat them there and we got to play them again [at provincials] and we beat them again, so we’re pretty happy about that,” Ratzlaff said.
He said most of the robots theirs competed against were less powerful units, which worked in Dover Bay’s favour.
Of the seven teams that went to the provincials, six were from the Island and included two teams from Dover Bay, and one each from Wellington, Ladysmith, Francis Kelsey and Cowichan secondary schools. The North Peace Secondary School team from Fort St. John was the only mainland team to enter.
Of the two teams from Dover Bay, one team ran an autonomous robot, designed and built by students Reef Roos, Seth Doyle, Reid Popkin, Hiroki Nariyoshi and Xiaoru Liu. Their machine performed well, but when shooting during practice rounds, its blade crossed the line into their opponent’s side of the arena.
“If it touches the line at all it’s a warning and if there’s three warnings you get disqualified,” said Joey Spillman, Dover Bay robotics instructor. “So an autonomous robot, it continuously moves around and if it touches the line three times it’s out, so we decided it’s probably best if we remove it and then just use our tele-operated ones. So that was the students’ strategy.”
Nariyoshi and Liu also contributed to the remotely operated robot program development.
The Dover Bay team expects to run up against more powerful shooter-type robot designs at the nationals.
“We’re going to the next level, officially, now at the nationals. This shooter is really good, so if anything, I’m expecting the exact same or even better,” Pelletier said. “I know a lot of teams are using air pistons to shoot, so there’ll probably be some pretty high-powered shooting happening in the nationals.”
To get there, though, the team hopes to raise $5,000 to cover travel and accommodations. Pelletier and Liu will operate the robots and Wiebe and Lawson will be the pit crew handling repairs and program coding.
The team has already received some sponsorship from Eddyfi Technologies, Lordco Auto Parts and the Dover Bay PAC.
Spillman said teachers Mike Dang and Bryson Marks each played roles in organizing the 2023 regionals and provincials and judging and refereeing at the provincials. Derek Beeston designed the arena for the regionals, which was also used at provincials.
To donate to the students’ travel expenses, visit Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools.
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chris.bush@nanaimobulletin.com
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