March was the final countdown! The robotics build season amounted up to one peaking moment, the Autodesk Oregon Regional FIRST competition at the Memorial Coliseum. 30 hours of competition over three days were jam packed with spirited teams sporting their colors, mascots dancing to the Macarena, and robots in action battling it out on the field. A total of 104 fierce rounds were played, each consisting of 3 teams on a red alliance and 3 on a blue alliance. Each team had a robot playing a goalie, midfield, and forward positions. Teams also had a chance to score extra points by raising their robot completely off the ground before time ran out. Intense showdowns were fought out on the field, and rivalries as electric as Optimus Prime and Megatron’s ensured that there would never be a dull moment. Sparks flew and a couple of robots even went up in smoke but the Stormbots, with a lightning fast robot and dynamic design ended the qualification rounds in 8th out of 61 teams, automatically moving in to the quarter finals! The Stormbots design even won the General Motors Industrial Design award due to its interesting use of a vacuum system and pneumatics. Even though we didn’t bring home the gold this time, the Storm definitely blew away the competition!

Check Us Out! The Skyview StormBots were featured in the Feb. 18th issue of the Columbian!