Wahkiakum leads SW WA Regional Robotics League

Submitted by Ron Wright

Photos by Jess Vik

Last weekend the Wahkiakum Mecha-Mules ran into tougher competition than the first tournament. We finished 2-3-1 for our six matches. Overall in our Region (29 teams, SW Washington, from Olympia to Vancouver to Skamania) we are 9-1, since only the best 10 of 12 matches are counted. And we still lead in our region by over 100 competition points.

The team circled up right after the tourney to discuss how to improve for the next tournament (Jan 15). Our biggest takeaway was: "practice until we can overcome every possible mistake." We also have a long list of small and large improvements in our robot that we will be working on over Winter break. Chief among them are: convert to drive-by-encoder and drive-by-gyro, use video recognition to improve autonomous scoring and obstacle avoidance, and improve scoring cycle time during teleop.

The First Tech Challenge robotics leagues are not leveled by school size like sports, so our competitor schools are all bigger than us, including schools like Olympia, Camas and Union. Our next tourney is at Capitol HS in Olympia, and the winners there move on to State at the Amazon building in downtown Seattle on Feb 6.

We have a team of folks ready to do demonstration presentations. Call the high school or the 4-H office if you would like to have us come visit your group.