Students at Uintah High School are using the skills they learned in geometry to design and construct a robot that will grab, scoop, and dump balls and blocks into a round storage container.

“You end up using a lot of geometry to be successful,” said student Colton Dofelmire.

Uintah High School math teacher Scott Dowling is the newest Uintah robotics coach.

“I noticed every student using ideas from their science and math classes when working on their robots,” Dowling said.

In the Uintah robotics team’s first competition Jan. 14 at Mountain Crest High School they placed 14th out of 27.

During the competition, teams scrimmaged against each other to score goals by placing balls and barrels in cylinder goals which varied in height up to 30 inches.

Each scrimmage consisted of a two minute period made up of 20 seconds of pre-programmed autonomous control immediately followed by 100 seconds of manual control.

The qualifying round consisted of 54 scrimmages that day. Uintah’s team competed in 10 scrimmages, going to the pits in between to make robot repairs.

“It was a day of watching teams of students sharing with each other robot engineering ideas and having good clean fun,” coach Keith McMullin said. “During the competitions all teams were very good sports. The place was alive with education — students working as members of teams, sharing and collaborating ideas, implementing and testing theories, and managing time to get ready for the next scrimmage.”

The team took two robots that fit into the rules of: made out of vex parts, will fit in an 18 inch wide, tall and high cube, and can include wheels or tracks, motors, battery packs and other useful connectors like rubber bands.

“Ours had one of the most unique designs at our last competition,” said freshman Michael Winn, who designed the robot that placed fourteenth.

“It’s an interesting process of thinking everything through and trying to put something together that actually works,” Winn said. “It’s actually fun figuring it out by yourself and watching it go.”

Winn’s design worked well for the two-man team, but it was Aaron Kitzmiller who programed the handheld remote and wired all the electronics needed to move the robot.

“It doesn’t work very well if you don’t have the right electronics and Kitzmiller is an electronics expert programmer,” Winn said.

Winn and Kitzmiller named their robot “the tank” because of how solid it was made. Its uniqueness included a scoop area with two motor driven wheels that would tighten around the ball and push it into the holding area.

Dofelmire and Juan Povar constructed the second entry from the high school, with Kitzmiller providing the programming expertise.

“The claws were too slow and it was not as balanced as it should have been,” Dofelmire said as he reviewed with Povar some of the improvements they needed to make before the next competition.

“We also learned how to play the game on this first competition,” Povar said. “It was good that we were able to keep modifying it to get it right while we were at the competition.”

Dowling said it was great to see the students engaged this way.

“I was impressed with what they learned while trouble shooting and solving problems during the competition,” Dowling said. “Using what they have learned in a match to help troubleshoot while pressed for time to prepare for the next match is a valuable life skill that will only benefit them as they continue their education and gain employment.”

Utah State University math teacher Dr. David Sam works with the robotics team, and agrees the students have a lot of opportunities to find jobs in science and manufacturing from what they learn in the program.

“What a great way to get young students motivated in math and science by making something that is fun,” Sam said, “and hopefully, they will decide to go into engineering or other applied technology fields.”

The Uintah VEX robotics teams are scheduled for their next robotics competition at Northridge High School in Layton on Jan. 28.

The team hopes to accumulate enough points in the remainder of the season to qualify for the regional competition in Logan.