Robotics starting to spread through L-C Valley

The Lewiston-Clarkston Valley will be overrun with robots this weekend.

A robotics competition, the Last Chance High Stakes Tournament, will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Asotin High School in the main gym. The event is open to the public at no cost. It’s the last qualifying event for Washington state before the State Championship, which takes place March 15 at Lake Washington High School in Kirkland, Wash. Teams that perform well at the state level advance to the World Competition on May 6-8 in Dallas.

The event will feature eight local teams, three from Asotin, two from Clarkston and three from Lewiston. The teams in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley have a local league competing in three “mini tournaments” to help them adapt their designs and strategies before larger tournaments. In addition to the local team there will be 48 teams from Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Canada.

Asotin robotics coach Tim Weber said that to his knowledge, there hasn’t been a robotics tournament of this size in Eastern Washington or Northern Idaho at the high school level before this event.

“So we are pretty excited teams are willing to travel to us,” Weber said in an email.

Shawn Hills is a junior at Asotin and has been doing robotics for the last four years. He is the team captain and leads the building and driving of the robot. As part of his role he helps organize the team, divide the work and discuss strategy.

One of the challenges his team has faced this year is trying to get their robot to climb a 4-foot ladder, the tallest game element in the tournament. There is only one competitive team in the world, and no team in Washington, that has been able to complete the task.

“We hope to be the first at our state competition in March,” Hills said in an email.

For Hills, one of the highlights is being able to travel to competitions. The team has traveled within the state but also to Indianapolis.

The Asotin team also spends time developing robotics in the community with elementary school camps, starting middle school teams and helping Lewiston with their competitive robotics program.

Some of the students representing Clarkston are junior Alban Borie, sophomore Grant Stevens, junior Mac Maughan, sophomore Aiden Kincheloe and junior Carlos Dufvenberg.

Stevens helps the team design and build the robot, which is what got him interested in the program, because he wants to pursue a career in engineering.

“My favorite part of robotics is definitely building,” Stevens said in an email. “Being able to think and make up something and then produce it and when it works how it’s supposed to it just brings lots of joy to me.”

The team has faced challenges with getting the design of the robot to fit the tournament requirements and complete the tasks at the tournament. Maughan said sometimes they did the math wrong and had to make emergency modifications. Dufvenberg, who helps code the robot, said that at first the code was messed up so when the joystick on the controller turned left, the robot would turn to the right.

“This was my first time really coding for a bot, so I had very little experience with code,” Dufvenberg said in an email.

Their coach, Kelli Williams, was able to steer the team in the right direction to develop the right code for the robot. With their setbacks the team has learned how to problem-solve.

“I’ve really enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment once we successfully fixed an issue that we’ve been struggling with for a week,” Maughan said in an email.

The team is also developing their social, communication and teamwork skills.

Part of developing those skills is working with other students to have a unified goal — it’s not one person doing all the work. To get to that unified goal, everyone needs to communicate with each other as a team.

“It would always be important to learn that skill because eventually in life, you will have to come out of your shell and work together in a team, even if you work better alone,” Dufvenberg said in an email.

Clarkston offers three years of robotics classes, with robotics 1, 2 and 3.

“This program is not just an after school club at CHS,” Williams said in an email.

Williams said that robotics is an essential class because it gives students critical problem-solving, coding and engineering skills that are applicable to the workforce. It can prepare students for careers in technology, manufacturing and health care. Along with career skills, students develop creativity and social skills through collaboration.

Stevens said students who are interested in building, design or programming, even if it’s not in robotics, should be part of the program because the skills that are developed can connect to other careers.

Kincheloe said if students are interested in joining robotics they can watch the league nights locally and talk with the students who are in the program.

“It’s a good way to have fun and you don’t necessarily have to be a good coder, a good builder or even a good designer,” Dufvenberg said in an email. “Because you can always get better and if you want to get in any of these areas then robotics could help with that.”

Brewster may be contacted at kbrewster@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2297.