Guelph robotics team ready to defend title as world champions

A robot zooms across the floor of a Guelph high school cafeteria, sucking up orange foam rings, and shooting them into slots cut into plywood structures.

A team of about 25 students watches their creation take aim, before it drives over to the next ring, repeating the process.

But sometimes, the robot isn’t lined up properly to pick up the ring, or the aim is off when it shoots.

“You program the robot and it’ll appear to work on paper, then you actually go test and see -- okay, maybe I made a mistake,” says lead programmer Ayden Boynton, a Grade 12 student at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Secondary School.

“So you fix the mistake. But then after that, you also have to adjust everything so that it runs reliably every single time.”

And Team 2609 – Beaverworx needs everything to go right when the FIRST Robotics competition season begins.

“It’s a lot more pressure that we have on us this year,” says Grade 11 student and media lead Alvaro Rodriguez Hernandez.

The robot gets ready to take a shot. (Daryl Morris/CTV Kitchener)

The team won the world championships last year at the competition in Houston, Texas, which means they’re automatically qualified this year.

“We are now having to compete for our title again,” says Hernandez.

The team is a group of students at Our Lady of Lourdes that meets after school with teachers and mentors to design, build, and program robots.

But as much as the program is designed to open students up to the possibilities of careers in STEM, it’s also a chance for them to learn leadership and teambuilding skills.

Boynton got interested in coding about eight years ago, after picking up a book at a fair.

“And then when COVID hit, I was bored,” he says, “I did some programming tutorials for about a year.”

When he got to high school, he decided to join the robotics team as a programmer.

Building, programming and operating the robot is a team effort. (Daryl Morris/CTV Kitchener)

Eli Reichart is the mechanics lead, helping to build the final product, and making sure the moving parts work properly.

“Every year in January we get a robot. We get a set of rules and guidelines to follow, and then from there we get to design and build a robot specifically for that year,” he says.

This year, the robots have to score points by shooting the rings into different structures in the game arena. For the first 15 seconds the robots must run autonomously.

Then, a student driver controls the robot for two minutes and 15 seconds, trying to score more points, and getting bonus points for working with other teams’ robots.

“For end game, we have a chain that we have to hang a robot from,” explains Reichart.

In each round of the competition, three robotics teams will join forces, to play against another side made up of three other teams.

“So we hope to do even better this year and just play with more teams and learn as well,” says Reichart.

“Everybody wants to make the robot succeed, and everybody puts work into it,” adds Boynton, “It’s pretty neat being a part of that.”

The team has its first regional competition this weekend in Durham, followed by other regional and district events in Waterloo and Mississauga.

Then they’re off to Texas for the world championships from April 17 to 21.