Every year our brilliant Stormbots go head to head with teams from across the region, showing their creativity, innovation, and robotics skills! This year, the Typhoon Stormbots fought hard at the First Canada Robotics Competition! They demonstrated incredible teamwork, determination and resilience while dealing with the pressure of the competition. From many hours of designing and building to competing on the stage, their journey is inspiring! Get an inside look of their experience and challenges through the perspective of one of their own members–Stiven Shen Wu!
How did you prepare for the competition?
“Leading up to the competition, we stayed almost everyday after school, just finishing up and perfecting our robots. We did basically Monday to Friday, everyday after school. We were there in the robotics room, mostly until 4:30, but a lot of the members stayed until 5-6:00. We were really dedicated to finishing up our robots for the competition; I feel like everyone was really dedicated to being there. We were working on final touches, Malravin was making sure the code was working out fine, and that it wouldn’t cause much trouble during the matches at the competition.”
What did you first do when you got to the First Canada competition?
“We had to leave around 6am to reach the competition at 7am, latest. When we first arrived, we had to wait for our robot to get there, so we first registered and got a table. Then, we started setting up and decorating our table; we had a lot of ducks, because our team is really into ducks. We had duck hats–and just a lot of ducks printed out everywhere.”
Why the ducks?
“That, I don’t know the story of, sadly. It’s more looked at like a tradition.
“Anyway, we had posters, we had our robot set up… people who were working there were coming up and asking us questions about our robot, that’s why we had tables set up for our robot; like outreach.
“We had to go to a meeting with the people who were working there. We explained the process of how we made the robot, what we did leading up to the competition, how we did the code, what we did over the summer–like charities. Helping out other countries or other places that haven’t had robotics; meeting up with people around the world and having a small talk with them. We grew a lot from it too! The people who did the meetings, they talked a lot with countries that had robotics, too. They learned a lot from everything they asked from the other robotics teams that had better experience than us. Malravin was the one who talked about the charity stuff to the people who were giving out awards. He had everything planned out.”
How did your matches go?
“Our robot did really well, we won a lot of our matches! We lost stuff because of thousands of things that our team did, and a bit by our teammates. Normally in a robotics competition we team up with another team, and we’re placed in brackets. We try to get as many points as possible with the other team–it’s like a 2v2. You know your teammate ahead of time, but you won’t always go up and talk with them–it’s random every time. It went pretty well… our final match wasn’t the best–it was the finals. The robot shooter stopped working because the wire for the shooter got unplugged somehow; in the middle of the round, so we couldn’t make any more points. So, that didn’t go the greatest for us, but all the other rounds went pretty well!
“There are judges and referees at the competition, and they come up to our tables to ask us about our robots and to explain the process of how we made it, how the code works… Just judging us based on how well our robot works, and making sure we’re not doing dumb stuff. This year we were shooting balls into buckets.
“It was really fun being at the competition! You get to hang out with your friends and other robotics groups! You get to learn a lot from their robots. It was just a really fun competition to be in.”
What advice would you give to students thinking about joining robotics?
“If they want to join robotics, they need to be dedicated while working on the robot. It’ll take a lot of time out of your school year to do it. My teammate Malravin, for example–he’s the president of the club and the leader of my team. He came to school early everyday to work on the robot. He’s usually always the one that stays the latest, too, and he’s always there at lunch to work on the robot. You need good time management; you need to stay on top of schoolwork to be in robotics–you can’t just dedicate all your time and flunk out of school. So, good time management and good dedication to your team.”
The Typhoon Stormbots journey showed their dedication, innovation, and teamwork. Their time at the competition showed their passion and perseverance. After every challenge they continued to push forward by supporting each other and improving. Beyond the competition, they grew as problem solvers, became better leaders, and collaborators. When we look to the future seasons, the lessons they’ve learned and the memories they’ve made will continue to shape their success in robotics and beyond.
