Waterloo high school reveals new robot

St. David Catholic Secondary School’s robotics Team Dave, unveiled their newest robot, MORGAN, to a crowd of family and friends on Thursday.

MORGAN is the thirteenth machine built by Team Dave.

“I think MORGAN has amazing chances at the competitions. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think we could do really well,” said Barbara Magolon, the lead admin.

The robot will compete against other high school teams at local events in March. The machines score points based on how efficiently they perform certain tasks. Last year's competition was focussed on throwing an object into a goal. This year, the challenge is picking up an object and placing it in a certain spot.

“We have a bunch of different spots where we pick and place pieces on the field. There are also different shaped pieces, and have different orientations when they fall over, so it’s really interesting for designing the robot,” said Emma Lehmann, a grade 12 student with Team DAVE.

Last year the team qualified for the world competition in Texas, but couldn’t compete due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Lehmann said despite that disappointment, it has made the anticipation for qualifying this time all the better.

“It’s like marked on my calendar with a big X. I’m super excited for it,” Lehmann said.

Lehmann said she wasn’t interested in engineering at first but after joining Team Dave, she’s learned of the possibilities it offers and is applying to post-secondary engineering programs.

“It’s helped me fall in love with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) and Engineering,” Lehmann said.

Team DAVE is made up of 38 students and roughly 13 mentors. The mentors are adults from outside the school that volunteer their time to help. Barbara Magolon, a long time mentor and the current Lead Admin on Team DAVE, said seeing the impact they have is worth all the work.

“Honestly, the students, just seeing them so excited every year, it just brings so much fulfillment,” she said.