Photos by Dave and Nancy Topps except where noted
Main photo: The Hoya Robotics team and mentors at a FIRST Robotics event at Durham College (back from left) Scott Taylor (mentor), Sydney Taylor, Ethan McKee, Oliver Byl, Noah Morgan, Dave Topps (mentor), Jeff Waller, Megan Cameron, Josh Trask (mentor), Nolan Meehan, Liam Martin-McTavish, Jakob Heinz (mentor), Sam Topps, Caden Leadston, Scott Chapeskie (mentor), Nancy Topps (mentor), Gord Mitchell (mentor), Paula Boon (mentor), Victoria Russell, Ian McTavish (teacher); (front row from left) Morghan Kiverago, Keira Brisebois, Andrea Bonafini, and David Sinton (supplied)
“It was a phenomenal weekend.”
That’s how Ian McTavish, HHS teacher and mentor to the Hoya Robotics team described a competition at Durham College held last weekend. The event was a qualifier for the FIRST Robotics provincial championships—the first of two that the team planned to compete in—and in addition to their robot performing better than ever before, the team won a prestigious award that earned them an automatic pass to the provincials.
The Hoyas had a tough start to the competition—they were up against a former world championship team for their first matches on Saturday and although they lost all four of them, the HHS team finished within two points of their opponents, said teacher and mentor, Ian McTavish.
The team won their next three matches of the day, but took a hit in the final match that damaged their robot. So on Sunday morning, they got to work on repairs before competing in an additional five matches, the first four of which they won.
“Throughout the entire competition we were averaging a minimum of around 25 points and as high as 36 points per match,” said McTavish. “To put that in perspective, there were a lot of matches that were scored at under 35 points. So if our robot is contributing that many points, we are doing really well.”
Hoya Robotics 4152 and GHS (Gravenhurst High School) Robotics 6864 prepare for the sandstorm portion of a match in which they are driving their robot blind (@hhs4152/Twitter)
Next, the top teams formed alliances for the remaining rounds of competition and the Hoyas were picked by the third-ranked alliance. They performed well in the quarter-finals and moved on to the semi-finals.
“In the semi-finals we were getting targeted because [the other alliance] knew that we were generating the most points, so they dedicated a robot simply to blocking us as much as they could,” says McTavish. “We had some hard-fought battles. In our last game our robot ended up on top of one of the balls and the ball punctured and got into our drive train which slowed us down a bit and that’s all it took to lose the match, unfortunately.”
The Hoya Robotics team just about to start a match. Their robot is 4152, and team members are visible on the other side of the wall. (supplied)
Although they were eliminated in the semi-finals, the team still had a shot at a ticket to the provincials: there are two awards that guarantee that a team will move on. The Hoyas won one of them, the Engineering Inspiration Award, which “celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community” and includes the “extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts,” according to the FIRST website. FIRST is an international youth organization that places a heavy emphasis on promoting STEM careers; its name is an acronym of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. To receive the award is an honour.
“That was exciting,” says McTavish. “They talked about the fact that our robot competes in things like Band on the Run, and how we are running robotics courses in our school and have helped other high schools in our board start robotics courses and robotics teams, and the LEGO robotics events that we run in December.”
Hoya Robotics received the Engineering Inspiration Award for their community outreach efforts (Ian McTavish)
“This is definitely our best machine that we have ever built, and our best driving,” notes McTavish. “The biggest thing for us is that in the past two years we’ve really implemented new training strategies, and new building strategies.”
McTavish adds that there were two game changers for the team this year: a temporary practice field at Huntsville Place Mall built with the help of Lovegrove Construction, and a CNC router purchased with the support of sponsors like Kimberly-Clark, the Parry Sound Muskoka Community Network, and Duncan Ross Architect.
(Below) The team practices hatch delivery (video) and puts those skills into use in competition (photo)
Hatch mechanism delivery. pic.twitter.com/Vksr7rtutN
— Hoya Robotics 4152 (@hhs4152) February 13, 2019
The Hoyas robot delivers the hatch (supplied)
“Being able to practice on the field…was huge because our driver came in [to the competition] knowing how the machine responded,” says McTavish. Practice sessions with a team from North Bay helped them hone their skills. “And we wouldn’t have been able to do that without the CNC router. All of the sudden the kids have a design idea and we’re able to draw it up on the computer, we’re able to manufacture the parts ourselves, and we’re able to implement it in hours instead of days and it showed off on our robot. Our results are showing how much we benefited from that.”
(Below) The Hoya Robotics team practices cargo delivery (video) and delivers the cargo in competition (photo)
Cargo delivery. pic.twitter.com/qV3wVE0XdC
— Hoya Robotics 4152 (@hhs4152) February 16, 2019
The Hoyas robot delivers its cargo on the playing field at Durham College (supplied)
McTavish says that he is thrilled with how the team has pulled together this year.
“It’s fascinating watching them come in as grade nine students not knowing how to do anything, and there’s a couple of students that will be graduating this year and they’re heading off to post-secondary and focusing on engineering and network technicians and it’s all based on skills they learned on the robotics team,” says McTavish.
And he loves watching how they help other teams. “It was just phenomenal to watch them step in and solve problems, and work with students from other teams to help them fix their problems because our robot this year didn’t really have any issues… To see them be able to do that troubleshooting and see them help kids from bigger schools, that was awesome.”
Now that the team knows they’ll be heading for the provincial championships, they’ll be watching other upcoming competitions to see how their opponents perform to help them be even more prepared.
“I was looking through the stats [from other competitions], and there were about 20 events this weekend around the world and our driver, in terms of hatch delivery, was in the top five,” says McTavish. “So we are really excited because we know that we are competitive this year. Our goal is to see what can we tweak to make sure we can handle defense, because that’s our biggest barrier now—teams are going to target us because they know how many points we can generate and they want to keep us off the scoreboard.”
Hoya Robotics will show off their robot, pictured here at their practice field at Huntsville Place Mall and before at the mall (before we installation of the climbing system, sponsor panels or upgraded air tanks (supplied)
If you want to check out this year’s robot, the team is hosting a robot reveal dinner and fundraiser on Thursday, March 7 from 5-7 p.m. Funds raised by donation and a silent auction will help the team offset travel costs for the provincial competition.
“We’ll have a couple of speeches and show off our robot from this year and show off our trophy and medals and share some of the activities that we have been doing in the last 12 months,” says McTavish. RSVPs can be made here.
And McTavish encourages families to cheer on the team at their next event prior to provincials, the qualifier at Nipissing University in North Bay on March 29-30. “Getting a chance to see this is phenomenal. We’ve got kids on our team that came up when they were in grade seven and saw it and it just opened their eyes to what kind of possibilities there are out there. It’s just such a fantastic event to watch and to inspire young students. So if you have young kids, bring them up and make a day of it and have a lot of fun and watch some great competition.”
The FIRST Ontario championships will be held April 10-13 in Mississauga.
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Congratulations Ian, coaches, sponsors and students. You make Huntsville very proud. Best of luck in the Provincial. Ian comes from good stock and it is obviously showing forth in how he handles his students.