Schools
Minnetonka High's Robotics Team Competes at State Fair
Minnetonka High School's Robotics Team, Chicken Bot Pie, competed at the Minnesota State Fair Sunday morning against other area high schools.
Robot Chicken’s electrical brain misfires, as if struck by an an aneurysm, and the contraption rolls fitfully toward the triangular red inner-tube and then away from it, forward and back, back and forward, clasping and unclasping its pneumatic claw.
“No! What’s he doing?” Jonathan Burleson says. “We’re going to lose this one.”
Minnetonka High School’s extracurricular robotics team, Chicken Bot Pie, entered their student-built robot in a state fair competition Sunday morning.
It was the three-year-old team’s first time at the state fair, and their automaton competed for a trophy against other high schools’ bots, earning points depending on its aptitude for accomplishing feats such as stacking and wracking inner-tubes, parallel parking and deploying a microbot to scamper up a metal pole.
The about 25 students who worked on Robot Chicken this year were assigned to teams--motor, pneumatics, etc.--that each designed and built a robotic system.
“We thought up ideas of what would be the best to do, drew it up in AutoCAD”--a design software program--“and built,” said Burleson, a Minnetonka senior with aspirations to be a mechanical engineer.
The result of their efforts, Robot Chicken, is a hodgepodge of conveyor belts, treaded wheels, neon green translucent hose, inked-up press-board and motors nested in a rococo web of cords.
“We wanted to make it so it would be easy to take apart,” Burleson said. “The motherboard comes out in one piece.”
Jack Holm, a junior interested in computer programming, was on the team dedicated to the robot’s driving system.
“Having certain wheels, it couldn’t really turn very well,” he said, “but then we figured it out.”
Nick Bahr, a technology education teacher at Minnetonka High School and the team’s adviser, said the the number of students participating in the robotics program has more than quintupled since the program’s inception.
“We did really well at the 10,000 Lakes Regionals,” he said. “We made it all the way to the state finals.”
