The OCCRA competition season is here! We’ve spent the past six weeks designing, fabricating, and coding to get ready for our first competition on October 22 at West Bloomfield High School. The robot is designed for the game Trash Can Jam, in which we pick up 8” tennis balls and score them in rolling trash cans. Our approach to this challenge was a vertical band system for balls and intake rollers to grab trash cans.

With the robot working perfectly the morning of the competition, we got ready for our matches. Our design proved to be successful as we won all four! The scores were 29-1, 33-8, 40-20, and 34-2. Other than one fall in the last match, we had little trouble filling and dumping the cans. With the matches over, the event moved onto awards. We earned the Judges Award for Team Excellence, in recognition of our community efforts, robot ability, and presentation skills. We also come home with the 2nd Place trophy!

Our next competition is on Thursday, October 26 at Seaholm High School. We can’t wait for more chances at victory!

Written by Cate Sullivan

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