Tlachtli didn’t look like the other robots at the Colorado Region Robotics Competition.
Tlachtli’s base was buffered with pink, plastic water noodles attached with brown surgical tape, and its arm was reinforced with plywood, scavenged from the George Washington High School drama department.
Even with this unconventional construction, Tlachtli – built by students from George Washington High School and the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning, both in Denver – battled its way to 13th place out of 48 teams at Saturday’s competition.
“We’ve been one of the underdogs,” said Emily Sigman, 18, a George Washington senior.
“When you start with no expectations, you can say, ‘Look at us; we’re still building our robot, but we’re going forward,”‘ she said.
The regional championship of the FIRST Robotics Competition, at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena, was the last stop before the national competition in Atlanta on April 12.
The 32 teams from Colorado and 1,300 teams across the nation built robots in six weeks using the same basic components.
The Washington-RMSEL collaboration dubbed team “Patribot” began the season with 10 members and $50 – a bit less than the $15,000 to $30,000 most robotics teams raise to participate in the tournament.
Hardware stores donated materials, and team members handed out brochures promoting the program to local businesses.
“We said, ‘If you’d like to see your neighborhood school succeed and beat all the rich schools, you gotta donate,”‘ Sigman said.
The competition incorporates engineering mechanics, computer programming and marketing to encourage students to participate in science and provide real-world experience, said Jim Beck, western regional director for FIRST Robotics.
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology is a nonprofit organization that promotes science education. The event is in its 15th year.
At the Magness on Saturday, the event resembled an NCAA basketball championship game with flashing lights and hip-hop blasting from the speakers as teams prepared to let the robots loose.
This year’s game, “Rack ‘N’ Roll,” challenged teams to build a robot that could use a color vision tracking system to distinguish between three inner tube colors, pick them up and place them on a rack with a blinking target light on top.
Tlachtli had a hard time scoring on the top row of the rack but received a high score for defensive play.
Next year, Joseph Arora, future captain of Patribot and a junior at George Washington, hopes to get more people to join and organize a winning team.
“It’s not just mechanical,” Arora said. “We need design to sell the team. We take people from the Harry Potter Club to the Chess Club.”
The Poudre High School team from Fort Collins took home the Regional Chairman’s Award with its robot, CAM the RAMbot.
Staff writer Gabriela Resto- Montero can be reached at 303-954-1638 or grestomontero @denverpost.com.
