The Biomech Falcons robotics team placed 52^nd out of 59 total teams when competed at the Metropolitan Community College on March 11-12.

As Ryan Mersmann, senior, explained, teams would set up an obstacle course for their opponents, who would then have to maneuver the course with their robot and shoot a ball into a hoop. Each time they successfully made a basket, the robot would have to return to the start and repeat the process.

Each match begins with a 15-second autonomous period, when the robot has to act from preprogrammed instructions. Afterwards, the teams can remotely control the robot for the remaining 2:15 minutes.

Leading up to the competition, the team had a six-week period to design and build their robot. The team starts by determining in a broad sense what the robot is supposed to do. Afterward, they figure out specifics and practical details before finally drawing up a design in Computer Aided Design (CAD) and creating a prototype. The prototype would then go through multiple revisions until they came up with the finished model.

Jason Smith, robotics supervisor, said that despite the team’s low ranking, they “played extremely well.”

“They ranked teams strictly on win/loss record,” Smith said. “I did the math, and we placed in the top t30 with scoring, the top t20 in scoring the ball, and the top 10 in autonomous scoring.”

Smith believes that the progress the robotics team made this year will go a long way for future robotics competitions. He said that the team has made “a lot of progress” since their first season three years ago.

“We learned how to build a flawless catapult system,” Smith said. “We didn’t get our targeting system quite where we wanted it. In theory, a robot should be better than a human is. A human gets it close, and the robot does the rest.”