Like spectators at a boxing match, more than 200 people Saturday roared and shrieked from their auditorium seats at the barely visible battle ensuing in a 12-by-12 arena onstage.
The challengers: four robots, all about 1 foot high, each jockeying to scoop up dozens of whiffle and golf balls and placing them into tall cylinders up to 4 feet high in just 21/2 minutes.
More than 300 middle and high school students competed Saturday in the FIRST Tech Challenge Illinois Championship Tournament at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Hermann Hall. For 30 teams from across the state — as well as one team from Michigan and one from Israel — six months of brainstorming, prototyping and robot building came down to six final matches in the arena.
The objective of the competition was to create a robot that could pick up the balls and get them into different-size cylinders. During each match, the robot would be pre-programmed to function autonomously for the first 30 seconds. Team members would then operate the robot with a remote control for the remaining two minutes.
FIRST mainly judges teams on what officials call “cooperation”: the ability of teams to assist their competitors. For each of the six matches, a team is paired with an ally to face another two-team alliance.
“The whole point is to get kids from across the state to share ideas and teach each other,” said Sravan Suryadevara, a FIRST Illinois planning committee member. “This isn’t just about winning a match.”
The competition goes further to promote cooperation by judging a team’s community outreach, which is comprised of volunteering and helping teach lower-level teams about robotics.
The highest award at the competition — the Inspire Award — is given to the team that exhibits the most professionalism, community outreach and cooperation, in addition to their robot’s design and performance.
This winners of this year’s Inspire Award were the Robo Raiders, based out of Troy, IL. The team had a total of 1,090 hours of outreach, with 306 mentoring hours and 208 volunteer hours.
Sophomore Joseph Phillips said he believed the biggest advantage of the team’s robot design, created with several original, 3D printed parts, was its efficiency.
“It’s really big and can push around other robots,” he said. “We can pick up and push around other balls, too.”
“It’s cool because you see the kids come in and say how robots are interesting, and how they’re excited about robots,” Suryadevara said. “And then they shift as they get older to becoming guides and teachers, and helping out the rookie teams.”
Team got robot? has won the Inspire Award for the past two years and is based in Elgin. Senior Marcos Marquez said his favorite aspect of the competition was helping out his ally teams and other rookie teams that need assistance with their robots through the day.
“The last two years have been really inspiring,” he said. “And this year, it was great taking the opportunity to really mentor these kids and pass on the torch.”
Hermann Hall was filled with colorful exhibits that highlighted the teams’ design process. The exhibits acted as NASCAR-style pit stops as well, as teams would repair their robots between matches with dozens of tools.
Spirit is a key component of the competition too. One all-female team wore blue and orange tutus; another, Team Fruit Salad, made cardboard fruit costumes. One team wore blinking gladiator helmets, and another dressed up as “Star Wars” characters.
Team RoboTitans of Chicago Math and Science Academy consisted mostly of freshmen but led the competition for most of the day.
“This was the hardest one,” said team member Roshaan Siddiqui. “Last year we had to pick up rings with the robots, but this year what’s hard is all these movable parts.”
He said he was surprised by the fact that his team’s robot had scored so well, especially since they weren’t so lucky during test runs.
“We tried a bunch of times and weren’t sure if it would work out,” he said. “But it’s working out pretty well.”
The top eight teams will advance to a regional competition in Des Moines, Iowa, next month. Those winners then advance to the world championships at the end of April in St. Louis, said FIRST Illinois Executive Director Dan Green.
Aside from the Robo Raiders, the top winners were: Octopi from Crystal Lake; “Got robot?” from Elgin; Zip Tie Fighters from Decatur; Beastie Bots from Highland Park; Robot to the Knee from Highland Park; Operation Bison Bot from Wood Dale; and Dynamic Signals from Gurnee.
