HUNTSVILLE, ON-Members of the Hoya Robotics team are getting ready for this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition.
Every year, the team from Huntsville Highschool go to this competition and face a unique engineering challenge. They must build a robot from scratch within two months to compete against other teams from across the province.
In an interview with the MyMuskokaNow.com newsroom, Lead Mentor and Programming Mentor of Hoya Robotics Ian McTavish said that he and others coach the students on skills and how to use various pieces of tech to help them compete. “This year myself and the students have been working on visual recognition technology for the competition.”
McTavish said that this year’s theme is Star Wars and they are building a robot that will launch dodge balls at a target using visual recognition tech that will let it aim the balls without anyone directing it.
FIRST which stands for For Inspirations and Recognition of Science and Technology is an international competition and last year McTavish said they ranked high enough that they were able to move onto the provincial championships which has 60 teams competing against each other.
If you are interested in watching the robotics team, starting in February they will be practising in the Huntsville Place Mall.
Between March 6th to the 8th, the team will be heading to Georgian College in Barrie for the first set of competitions and from March 27th to the 29th, they will be at Nippissing University in North Bay.
