First Tech Challenge is a robotics competition held worldwide where thousands of teams compete against and with each other to complete a certain challenge. There are teams from Japan, New Mexico, Texas and everywhere in between.

Powell staged its annual RoboRumble Jan. 5, a scrimmage that allowed teams from Wyoming to come and practice against one another.

Six teams participated in the scrimmage. There were four teams from Powell (10731 Radioactive, 3188 Squiggle Splat Bang, 10541 RoboPanthers, and 6437 Mad Hatters), two teams from Midwest Wyoming (5762 Midwest Martians, and 4087 Rebel Bots) and one team from Cody (14612 Cody High).

Unlike normal competitions, where there is a set bracket, the Powell High School Robotics Club organized it so a team that wanted to take part in the battle placed their marker on a designated table. When there were four markers on the table, a match was held.

A typical robotics match is composed of a red and a blue alliance. Each alliance had two teams on it with one or two drivers who control the robot and one coach who tells the drivers what to do.

A team you partnered with in one round can be your opponent in the next. This allows for each team’s robot to be fairly pitted against one another.

Each year, there is a different challenge to complete. The challenge this year is called Rover Ruckus.

There are two sections of each round – Autonomous and TeleOp.

In Autonomous, the robot is preprogrammed to do a specific task. Teams are challenged to create an autonomous that can drop their robot down from a “lunar lander” and push a block that is placed in a random order, place their team marker in their area and park partially or fully in the crater.

In the other, TeleOp, one or two drivers controls the robot. During this time, if they haven’t already landed, they can lower their robot from the lander. For the rest of the time, they can move blocks and balls out of the crater and either push them into a designated area or pick them up and place them into the lander. The last 30 seconds of TeleOp is called endgame. Teams can rehang their robot or park partially or fully in the crater.

After the matches, teams are given points according to what they completed during the round.

By the end of the scrimmage, team 10731 Radioactive had placed first, 6437 Mad Hatters got second and 14612 Cody High got third.

The other Powell teams didn’t participate as much as 10731 Radioactive and 6437 Mad Hatters, leaving them out of the rankings.

RoboPanthers competed four times and Squiggle Splat Bang only competed three times.

Both teams were having technical and mechanical issues with their robots.

“We had a couple issues with our phone connecting to the REV and we also had issues with our arm functioning, but that’s because we haven’t had time to test,” junior 10541 RoboPanthers team member Zach Griffin said.

Team 3188 were also having mechanical issues with their arm.

“Our robot arm was not working with us so we’re going to get that fixed,” sophomore team member of 3188 Squiggle Splat Bang Madelyn Horton said.

Despite the fact that teams had issues with robots, everyone still had a good time.

“I enjoyed spending time with my friends while working on cool robots,” Horton said.

All teams have improvements they need to make to their robots before the next competition.

“We would like to be able to get more efficient with blocks and be able to hang,” Griffin said.

The next robotics competition will be Montana State in Bozeman on Jan. 25, so teams have two weeks to prepare their robot and team.