For the second year in a row, students from Reynolds Secondary School have qualified to compete in the First Tech Challenge (FTC)—the robotics world championship—next month in Texas.

Fresh from winning the provincial title last month in Surrey, the Reynolds Reybots have their sights set on Houston, where they’ll compete with peers representing 600 teams. 

“Robotics is just a lot of fun,” says Kas Karin, a math and science teacher at Reynolds, and the team’s head coach. 

“It’s a team sport, a lot of fun and exciting. You get to see what the team accomplishes, win or lose.”

Robotics is the study and practice of robot design, construction, operation, and use. As a competition, it’s a little complicated—at least to the uninitiated. 

Let the games begin

Robotics matches usually pit a Blue Alliance against a Red Alliance, both consisting of two teams, and each having up to two operators and a drive coach (the drive coach is also a student).

“So, we’ve got a drive coach, who's standing there watching what's happening and telling the kids what to do when making up the strategy,” Karim says. “And then sometimes, there's what's called a human player, so that the human player has to, in this case, put the pixels down on the ground for the robot to pick up.”

Those “pixels” are plastic, hexagonal-shaped markers three inches wide, and a half-inch thick, in various colours, representing different amounts of points. 

The game's parameters change each competition, so it’s up to teams to design and build a robot to play the specific game. Robots can only be so big: They must fit within an 18-inch box, although they can expand once the game begins.

How world championship robotics matches are played

The game is played on a 12-foot-square foam playing field equipped with two trusses and two backdrops where the pixels are placed to “score.”

The Blue Alliance installs itself at one end of the playing service with the Red Alliance at the other. 

Matches last roughly three minutes and consist of three different phases. 

The first 30 seconds of the match is autonomous, with the robot attempting to achieve certain goals all by itself, with no touching or prodding. The robot can only do what it has been programmed to do. 

Vision is an element at this year’s FTC, so the robots will be able to “see” the scoring breakdown and act accordingly to place the pixels in the right place, Karim says.

“So, there's a lot of engineering in there,” Karim says. “There's a lot of mechanics in there, and there's a lot of programming in there, just to make that 30 seconds work properly.”

For the next two minutes, the robot is controlled by human operators, usually, one or two students who control-drive the robot around, making it do the things it's supposed to do as efficiently as possible, and racking up points by placing different-coloured pixels onto the angled board, to earn a variety of points, depending on colour and placement.

The driver control period’s final 30 seconds—the end game, it’s called—can get a little chaotic with additional types of scoring. Robots will climb the truss and even launch drones, kind of like a Hail Mary in football, only a little more scientific and planned. 

Points can be deducted, too

Robots are not allowed to deflect or intercept an opponent’s drone and they can’t hit, block, or even touch other robots, so in FTC, you can’t beat ‘em in the alley. This ain't hockey, either.  

Larger, heavier robots are used in the First Robotics Competition (FRC), which is played on a larger field and permits contact.

“You are allowed to collide at top speed with other robots, so it’s much more of a battle,” says Karim, who adds there’s also a robotics level for younger kids called First Lego League (FLL).

“Some of our kids are the kind of kids who aren't inclined to join something like the soccer team. But it is competition. It is a team. They do learn all of the different things that you learn as part of a team,” he says.

And yet, Karim says, there’s a cerebral aspect, a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) side that’s not necessarily found in most traditional athletic endeavors.

The kids are alright with robotics matches

“The coolest thing about robotics is the whole building and programming process to complete the robot to make it be able to do specific tasks,” says Tehya, one of the Reynolds Reybots Robotics Club’s 19 members.

“What I like about this program is the connectedness and how it has me more socially confident as a person.”

For teammate Tyler, the fun part of robotics is making the robot “do things by itself.”

He says the program “has shaped [him] into a more confident person.”

Calvin says he likes building robots “and learning to code them,” and being able to build a robot with friends is the coolest thing about it.

Karim says as a teacher he’s spent the last 30 years trying to give kids the skills they need to succeed later on in life.

“And for me, what we're doing here and robotics does that like nothing I have ever seen before."

A little history

The Reybots are in their sixth year and have competed in both FRC (the more physical version) and FTC (what's going down in Texas next month).

Last year, Karim tells Capital Daily, the team was pleased just to make it the FTC international championship, where it ran into a buzz saw of teams with mentors from NASA and other multi-national tech companies.

He says the two-time defending BC champs return to Houston with more experience and focus.

"We'll soon find out how well-prepared we are because the competition at World's is pretty fierce."

Fellow teacher Eric Van Moll helps guide the students through the process of designing and building the robots and has been coaching with Karim since 2020.

The teams' mentors are Brandon Baker, a retired military engineer who is in his second year with the team, and Jason Rider, who's in his first.

Baker helps the students with the specifics of design and troubleshooting. Rider is a professional programmer and Java expert who assists students with programming.

‍Here's where you can help

Karim says it’s going to cost in the neighbourhood of $40K to send 15 students along with coaches and mentors to Houston April 17-20, so the Reybots have set up a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising one-quarter of that amount.

They’ve scheduled a shredathon (need any documents shredded?) in the Reynolds School parking lot for March 16 and a bottle drive at the same locale on April 6.

They’re also inviting corporate, institutional, and individual donations and sponsorships, with tax receipts provided accordingly.