The St. Louis U. High Robotics Club competed at an in-person competition for the first time in two years this past Saturday at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. The competition was an off-season, FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) sponsored event.

Planning for the team’s robot began in January 2020, and the first iteration of the robot was completed by March in preparation for a regional competition to be held at SLU’s Chaifetz Arena. 

On the day of the originally planned competition, the team was on the floor of the arena equipped with its tools and robot. However, minutes before the competition was to begin, the organizing group, FIRST Robotics, canceled all competitions nationwide due to the threat of Covid-19. The FIRST Robotics Competition usually lasts from early January to March, where teams record the previous season's robot doing various tasks. FIRST, however, created an at-home competition for the 2021 season to respond to the pandemic.  

Last May, the Robotics Club learned that the Gateway Robotics Competition, an off-season, annual competition using the previous season’s robot, was on. While the team already had a robot able to compete in the competition, it needed several repairs and some design revisions. The team met a couple of times during the summer to come up with a plan for the school year. Once the school year started, they began meeting every day after school to work on the robot. They reconstructed the arm, which the robot used to shoot balls and climb onto a pivoting pullup bar. 

“Redoing the arm was a longer process than we had thought it would be, as we ran into some problems we didn’t expect to have,” said Robotics Club president senior Matthew Leight. “I did like having a project to do at the beginning of the year that got us engaged and competing.”

On Friday afternoon, the team loaded up four cars with everything needed for the match and headed west to Lindenwood University. On Saturday morning, the team gathered for the competition and made the final preparations for the day's festivities.

The team competed in six qualifying matches before the alliances (teams made up of three robots) were selected for playoffs. Each match consisted of two alliances competing against each other. Points were scored by shooting dodgeballs into three different holes, spinning a wheel a certain number of times, and climbing onto a bar that pivoted in the middle. However,  during the competition, the team faced several obstacles. 

 “At one point, our wheel broke,”said Robotics Club moderator Robyn Wellen.  “(Another team) actually gave us a wheel so that we could still compete.”  

“It’s pretty inevitable that things are going to break, so when it happens we have to make sure to stay positive and be ready to improvise solutions,” said junior Ben McCalsin. "We really just try to get the robot as close to functional as we can in the limited time between matches.”

The Robobills finished 12th out of the 24 teams that competed  after the qualifying round. They were selected to join an alliance with Ladue and Westminster. Unfortunately, their alliance was eliminated after the first round, but the team went out with a bang, finally succeeding in the climbing portion of the event. 

“I think our biggest success was in the last round we were in,”  said Leight. “It was hard because we had to use another robot to help us climb, so we finally got that to work so that was really nice to see.”

While they were disappointed with the result, team members were happy to return to in-person competitions.

 “There’s nothing like it,” said Wellen. “Just the atmosphere, it’s a lot of fun.” 

The competition also served as a lesson and a way for members to gain valuable experience. 

“With the problems we ran into during the competition and half the team not having been to a competition before, I think we did pretty well. It was great to be able to compete and collaborate with other teams again,” said Wellen.

The team looks forward to honing its skills in preparation for the official robotics season, which begins in early January.