Middle schoolers win robotics state championship, advance to nationals

HOOD RIVER — A team of three eighth-grade students from Hood River Middle School, Euan O’Brien, Vivaan Sharma and Ronan Kairis, won the Oregon State Championship in the VEX IQ Robotics Competition on Feb. 21.

Team United Robotics, led by coaches Andy O’Brien and Kishore Sharma, will now advance to the VEX Robotics World Championship, which will be held in St. Louis April 28-30.

What started as an opportunity for students to experiment with engineering concepts and robotics has grown into a competitive program built around problem solving, design and teamwork.

“They’ve designed a robot to perform these tasks, and they’re constantly refining that robot and then practicing driving the robot,” said O’Brien. “It’s a fairly simple game field, but it’s a really good representation of what a real project looks like at an engineering company, including documenting the design, communication, teamwork, failures and successes.”

O’Brien has coached the group since they began in sixth grade and said their dedication has grown each year. Over time, he explained the students have become more focused and invested in improving both their robot and their plans for competition.

“This is the third year that I’ve coached an HRMS team. The first year was sixth graders, and half the kids weren’t very interested, and they were distracted,” said O’Brien. “It was difficult to get them to focus, and then a little less so in seventh grade —but these eighth graders are all super into it.”

“They want to spend almost all their free time working on their robot or working on strategies. Their passion is what drives them to be successful, and they want to spend their time doing this instead of other things.”

The VEX IQ competition features a new challenge each season that requires teams to design, build, and program robots capable of completing tasks on a small game field. Teams compete in timed matches where they must score as many points as possible by completing specific objectives with their robots.

“Every year there’s a new challenge, and it all takes place on this game field that’s about five feet by five feet,” O’Brien said. “This year’s challenge, there are pieces that are called pins and then pieces that are called beams. You’re picking up pins and beams and making stacks in certain areas on the board to score points. Whoever scores the most points in a match wins.”

With the state championship secured, the team is now preparing for the world competition in St. Louis. Preparation includes refining the robot, improving game strategy and raising funds for the trip.

“They’re really going to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and do everything that we can to be successful and not leave any stones unturned,” said O’Brien. “I think we’re going to spend somewhere around $9,000 or $10,000. We’re really focused on doing fundraisers in the community to help offset some of those costs, but also share with the community what they’re doing and why it’s cool.”

United Robotics is organizing a robotics summer camp for 11 and 12-year-olds to help raise funds for the trip. Those interested can contact obr.andy@yahoo.com for more information.

“I just want people to know the level of commitment and the amount of hard work that they put into this,” said O’Brien. “The success they’ve had is great, but also the work that they have to do to be ready for worlds in a month and a half.”