Robotics teams compete at Oregon Championship

Competition runs 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

At Super Qualifiers, Steelhead earned the Think Award for “removing engineering obstacles through creative thinking.”

Duct Tape earned the Design Award, for demonstrating “industrial design principles, striking a balance between form, function, and aesthetics.”

Men in Green earned the Connect Award for “connecting the dots between community, First Robotics and the diversity of the engineering world.”

This weekend in Hillsboro, the top 48 FTC teams in Oregon, made up of middle and high school students, are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. Games are played in a 12-by-12-foot field with two alliances of two teams competing against each other for points. Rockwell Collins is the presenting sponsor.

Each year FIRST Tech Challenge defines a game that drives the design and programming of the robot. In this year’s game, Relic Recovery, robots collect and place cubes into specific patterns called ciphers, and by detecting jewels of the appropriate color with their sensors. Additionally, robots can score points by placing “relics” onto targets outside the field or balancing their robots on platforms in the exciting final seconds of the match.