WHS robotics team is 2nd at Zillah tournament

Two teams from Wahkiakum High School drove five hours each way to compete in three events with 33 other teams from around Washington State at the 8th annual Zillah Robotics Tournament on March 19. Over 60 students competed in this Robot Challenge.

The students are enrolled in the robotics class at Wahkiakum High School and have learned how to wire electrical systems on breadboards, write and load computer coding into microcontrollers, and program a variety of sensors such as infra-red detectors and QTI sensors in order to navigate and operate their robots.

Putter Thongkijlaohachai, Dylan Ahmed and Flavio Stucki comprised the "Mule Train" team. These three students won the SumoBot Wrestling championship category going undefeated in six matches.

The "Farmer Jack" team was made up of Jack Leavitt, Ben McClain and Sean Yu. The "Farmer Jack" team finished in 3rd place in the SumoBot wrestling category losing only to the Mule Train team from their own school in the semi-finals.

In the SumoBot wrestling competition two robots are in the ring at a time with each trying to push the other out. Teams must build electrical circuits with infrared detectors and other sensors to keep their robot in the wrestling ring and locate and drive their opponent out of the ring. The robots are controlled by 100's of lines of computer programming code that the teams must write and load onto their microcontrollers in order to navigate the SumoBot. The teams were pumped to receive two plaques for the sumo wrestling.

The second phase of the competition involved racing robots on a kidney-shaped track and each trying to catch and tag the other. Teams race on the track by writing computer code that enables their robot to follow black lines with electronic sensors. Mule Train finished fourth and Farmer Jack was sixth.

At the end of the day, all points were added up in three different categories of competition in order to decide the top three teams. Farmer Jack finished in 8th place and Mule Train was in second place which the entire team celebrated.

Royal High School barely edged out the Wahkiakum team to finish first overall. This was the first competition for the Wahkiakum students, and several of the Royal High School students were competing for the fourth time, so they were a formidable opponent.

Co-Advisors Jeff Rooklidge and Ron Wright were proud of the team. Beyond doing so well in the competition, our team members represented Wahkiakum well. One of the more telling moments occurred in the semi-finals for the Racing competition. Flavio was pilot for the Mule Train's bot. The other team had trouble getting started and had to make an unscheduled return to the pits for repairs. Flavio encouraged the team to get their robot ready even though it took them longer than the required time. Soon after the match started it became clear that the other robot was going to beat Mule Train. As the tag occurred, Flavio extended his hand and congratulated the other team on its win. That team went on to be the racing category winner.

The Wahkiakum team was very thankful for Ron Wright's contributions as co-advisor at the competition.