Machine masters face off at Robot Games

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This article was published 17/03/2019 (2609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A swarm of about 200 robots and their young creators spent Saturday at the 24th annual Manitoba Robot Games, competing to see which automaton was the greatest of them all.

The “greatest” robot could mean the fastest robot, as in the autonomous drag race event. Or the strongest robot, as in the tractor pull competition. Only well-programmed robots could hope to triumph in a new event, the autonomous line maze — and it took a nimble machine to navigate the “super scramble” obstacle course.

At the end of the day, the competition held at Winnipeg’s Tec Voc High School wasn’t really about the glory of robo-victory, or the disappointment of robo-defeat.

“They learn incredible life lessons,” said Herb Reynolds, chair of the planning committee for the Manitoba Robot Games.

“We joke about the fact that the first rule about robots is, they break. So you build them, they break and you have to figure out how to fix them. So there’s a load of problem-solving.”

That’s not the only skill mastered by the participants, which included kids from grades one through 12. They also learn how to work together towards a common goal, Reynolds said.

“All the kinds of things you would see in industry — you want a creative mind, you want a problem-solving mind, you want a teamwork person, all of those are present here at the Robot Games.”

Saturday’s Robot Games drew a large number of competitors from Hutterite colonies. Reynolds said Manitoba’s Hutterite communities have gotten more involved in years past.

“I think they see the value, because their kids go through the school system right on the colony, most of them. And then the skills that they develop benefit the colony.”

Another demographic is also making a place for themselves in the Robot Games: girls. Michelle Carriere competed in the Manitoba Robot Games when she was in high school, about 16 years ago.

“It was kind of intimidating, a little bit, because you’re just surrounded by all these boys,” she said.

“And just the way that they think that, ‘Oh, why is there a girl here?’… Just knowing that I could potentially beat these guys was really empowering.”

On Saturday, Carriere was leading the seven members of the All-Girls Robot Fight Club, an initiative of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Kid-Netic Energy outreach program at the University of Manitoba.

“I find that the gender gap is getting smaller,” said Carriere, who’s a recruitment and outreach officer with the U of M program.

“Especially this year, there’s a lot more girls involved.”

Building robots and competing with them helps the girls build friendships, Carriere said, and also teaches them about project management and time management. But above all, she said, the competitions teach kids to work through the unexpected.

“It’s all about troubleshooting, knowing that sometimes the code — even though you think it’s perfect — it might also just do something totally wrong.”

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sol_israel