Maricopa Skill Center students, Justin Vanier and Patrick Vanier, participated in the 2015 Avnet Tech Games in April.
The MSC team competed in the Robot Race Obstacle Course, in which each team builds and programs a Lego robot in a five-hour period to complete a series of tasks.
The first obstacle for the robot was to complete a “line follow,” where the robot has to follow a line without falling of a table. MSC’s robot was able to follow the line until the end where it ran into a problem.
“We were utilizing a line edge following program and the final turn in the course proved too sharp an angle for the robot to sense the line in time,” Justin said. “However, other teams ran into a variety of difficulties also.”
“The robot had to identify different colors and react to each color in a different way,” Justin shared.
The MSC team was confident that their program would work, actually getting the robot to identify the yellow squares and do something different each time, which proved to be the most challenging aspect of the competition, Justin shared.
The second obstacle was a maze containing colors to dictate the actions of the robot.
“The robot had to identify different colors and react to each color in a different way,” Justin shared.
He added that the team was confident that their program would work, actually getting the robot to identify the yellow squares and do something different each time, which proved to be the most challenging aspect of the competition.
In testing before the competition they were able to get the robot to "see" the different colors and perform the different task successfully. However during the competition the color sensor failed to pick up the colors due to ambient light conditions.
“We wish to return next year using the knowledge and experience gained from this years bout to succeed further,” Justin said.
The students utilized some of the knowledge they gained in the precision machining program as CNC Machinists.
The MSC team was sponsored by the Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center.