During Canyon Ridge High School’s 2022 ‘Club Rush’, students had their first look at the new Robotics Team. The Robotics Team is run by Mr. Todd Anderson, the engineering teacher at Canyon Ridge. The team creates a robot for competitions.

During their meetings, the Robotics Team constructs their robot and code its parts. “Right now we’re still making the layout. We’re still trying to figure out how to code all of the motors, use the lifts, use the arms, all that kind of stuff,” said Trenton Corn, a Canyon Ridge sophomore on the Robotics Team. The Robotics Team meets every Tuesday in room 313 after school. These meetings last until 3:30 to 5:30.

The Robotics Team has two minor scrimmages and one major competition in Meridian from March 10-11th. One scrimmage the Robotics Team will enter is in Gooding High School and will start in January. “There’s other competitions outside the state of Idaho that we could travel to if we wanted to, but at this point, we’re not quite ready to be traveling out of state. There’s also a lot of cost involved with travel,” said Mr. Anderson. The Robotics Team has already done one scrimmage in Kimberly, Idaho.

The way the game works is there are posts that are standing up and there are cones. The robot grabs a cone and sticks it on one of the posts. There are short, middle, and high posts, which give your team a different number of points for each one.

“There’s a driver control portion of the game where the team has a remote, but it has to all be programmed. There’s also an autonomous portion of the game where the team writes commands and say ‘Go’ and the robot moves around and does all the scoring itself, nobody is controlling the robot,” said Mr. Anderson.

The competitions also have rules that the teams have to follow. “We have to build a robot from the equipment that’s approved for the competition; it’s not just whatever you want. There’s a company called REV Robotics. They’re the standard, that’s what you use for this competition. We have a kit and the guys are building a robot. There are size requirements like the robot can’t be bigger than 18”x18”x18”, so it has to stay within that space, and there’s programming involved with that robot to play a specific game,” said Mr. Anderson.

Their team is run by team leader Luke Beus, a sophomore here at Canyon Ridge. “He’s taken on a lot of responsibility in organizing our weekly meetings, communicating with a couple of groups that are mentors to us. Luke has done a lot of the heavy-lifting, organizing, communicating, really bringing everybody together in the group,” said Mr. Anderson.

“I personally am coordinating a lot of mentoring. Right now, we have the ‘Tesla Coils’ in [the shop], they are another Robotics Team. So, I coordinated that with them and I help with building and designing the robot,” said Beus. 

The other members have taken on other roles, such as coder and builder. “There’s two programmers right now and I’m making sure the robot moves and stops,” said Corn.

Trenton Corn’s goal is more focused on competitions. “I think the goal for this club is to get to the finals and get a decent spot. We’re probably not going to win because it’s our first time, but just to get to a decent spot,” said Corn. His goal is affected by some barriers. Their issue is that the team doesn’t know how to build and code the robot.

Mr. Anderson’s goal takes a different path, being focused on the team. “Two things, the first one is to establish a team that is going to continue. Next year, I don’t want all these guys to be gone and have to recruit five new guys that are interested in this,” said Mr. Anderson

“The second goal is to provide opportunities outside whatever I’m doing in Engineering class. This specific robot kit and the programming, we’re not doing this in class. Getting the team excited and creating that culture, but also providing them additional opportunities that we’re not doing in class,” said Mr. Anderson

“Since we are a rookie team, a brand new team, a lot of the general principles when building and coding this type of robot, we haven’t learned that because it’s our first year,” said Beus.