By Jennifer Mair
Outstanding teamwork and dedication helped a local high school team make a strong showing in a national robotics contest.
Team Glebe, representing Glebe collegiate, Lisgar collegiate and Holy Trinity Catholic high school, placed ninth overall out of 20 teams participating at the fifth annual Canada First Robotics Competition on the weekend of Feb. 27.
Each team was assigned the goal of building a robot able to toss rings around pylons.
Team Glebe finished third for its team Web site and third for most innovative design.
Juli MacDonald, an 18-year-old OAC student at Lisgar, was the sole representative from her school, and a first-time participant in the competition. She got involved after she’d “heard from people in the past how much fun it was.”
Team Glebe had eight weeks to design and build its robot, Shallow Blue. MacDonald says the team brainstormed for three weeks, and worked until 8 p.m. on most weekdays, and all day on Saturdays.
The students worked at Mitel, which sponsored them by paying the entrance fee of $8,000, and provided 17 engineering mentors to assist them.
MacDonald says she was amazed by the process, from the first step of “being told we have to build something robotic to throw something onto a pylon, and not being told what or how, to the final product.”
Anne Robitaille, a Mitel mentor, says working with the team was “a challenge because you’re dealing with all kinds of interest and skill levels.”
She says their curiosity and drive really helped them. They used CJOH’s news set to shoot a video that was part of their entry, and looked at other mechanisms such as vending machines for inspiration. Robitaille called the experience “a lot of fun working together. It’s a nice feeling.”
Rolly Rotondo of Glebe Collegiate’s science department says he believes this year’s performance improved over last year’s because the team was more cohesive, and because “we didn’t make the same mistakes.” Team Glebe finished in 12th place in 1997.
MacDonald calls the competition itself “very nail-biting.”
“It was so stressful to watch the robots. We had done a lot with the robot, but we couldn’t do anything right then,” she says.
“I expected it (the experience) to be good, but not this amazing. There were cheering contests between the teams, and whenever there was a wait, there was music playing, and so it was like a big dance.”
Rotondo and MacDonald say they were both pleased with the results despite mechanical problems. MacDonald says the modems used for their remote controls experienced delays, so they didn’t work as well. However, because of Team Glebe’s strong performance, Rotondo says it was asked to exhibit the robot at the Ontario Science Centre.
“We would have liked to do better, because we knew the robot could do better, but everyone was really good about it,” says MacDonald. She points out that in a subsequent demonstration, Shallow Blue beat the winning robot.