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Berthoud robots target Dallas — Critical Mass and Awkward Cats

April 27, 2023 | Education

Photo by Will Cornelius
Milo Elliot, Indira Moss and Piper Moss (right) inspect and ready their robot — ‘Cronk’ — for a test run on April 16 in preparation for the VEX Robotics World Championship 2023 in Dallas.

By Will Cornelius
The Surveyor

With the sun setting last Sunday evening, Mountain Avenue in Berthoud was quiet save for a few dogwalkers and restaurants. But at an undisclosed basement nearby, several of Berthoud’s brightest minds tinkered and tested with sophisticated robots.

Those kids are part of Berthoud Robotics, a non-profit robotics club loosely affiliated with Berthoud area schools to provide competitive robotics opportunities to students. The group is a leading robotics club in Colorado, qualifying multiple teams for the state, national and international championships.

This year Berthoud Robotics had two teams qualify for the VEX Robotics World Championship 2023, held later this month in Dallas. VEX Robotics is a global robotics program promoting STEM education and careers for elementary to university students. The VEX Robotics competition has major sponsors including Northrop Grumman, NASA, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and the U.S Air Force.

The world championships in Dallas feature hundreds of teams from across the globe. There are also different divisions for different age groups. Elementary and middle schoolers compete in the ‘slapshot’ competition. While the high-school team competes in the ‘spin-up’ competition. The competitions involve creating and controlling a robot that is tasked with maneuvering and manipulating a course to score points. Both competitions involve picking up and shooting small pucks to score points.

Making up the younger team — the Awkward Cats — is Milo Elliot, Indira Moss and Piper Moss. The team has gone through around five iterations of robots before the current design. “Now we have a conveyor belt leading into the shooter that lets the pucks funnel through,” Piper Moss explained.

Throughout the season, the robot has changed substantially. The current design was literally built around the new conveyor belt idea they came up with. The teams are tasked with keeping an engineering log that explains the design process for the robot. “It’s like our engineering process and like our code and like what happened and what problems we had to fix,” said Indira Moss.

Throughout the season, the robot has changed substantially. The current design was literally built around the new conveyor belt idea they came up with. The teams are tasked with keeping an engineering log that explains the design process for the robot. “It’s like our engineering process and like our code and like what happened and what problems we had to fix,” said Indira Moss.

On the other side of the basement headquarters was the other team, Critical Mass. John Rottinghaus, Casey Gustafson, Jack Newberry and Henry Pakenham huddled around their robot as they prepared it for another test run. Competing in the older age division, their robot has more advanced features, but also a more complicated design. “It’s just been a lot of practice and seeing what other people are doing,” explained Rottinghaus.

Trial and error and competing in as many tournaments as possible are some of the keys to improving the robot. “Every tournament we go to we learn more and more and more and figure out more and more things about what our robot does well and bad and how to fix them,” Newberry stated.
Watching the two teams in the back are Kurt Worrell, the president of Berthoud Robotics, and Michael Rottinghaus, coach of the Critical Mass team. Even though both of their day jobs are in engineering, they still love being around robots.

While both the teams are a mix of excited and nervous about the world championship, Worrell and Rottinghaus cannot wait for it. “It’s like a rock concert,” Rottinghaus said.

The VEX Robotics World Championships will be held in Dallas between April 25 and May 4 with hundreds of teams from across the globe competing.

To find out more about Berthoud Robotics visit (https://www.berthoudrobotics.org/).

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