The Denfeld high school robotics team, Denfeld Nation Automation 4009, is gearing up for the Seven Rivers regional competition in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where they will compete against 50 other teams from the region.

They have been preparing for weeks now, and in that time, they’ve been able to make adjustments to the previous iteration of their robot, working hard to make sure everything is good to go.

“We’ve had some issues like having to climb. We have to pull our entire robot up off the ground, and we found that our climber wasn’t strong, so we’ve had to reiterate the design using our school shop to cut our own metal pieces for it to make them stronger so that they can fully support our robot,” said team captain and Denfeld senior Ben Martin.

Their robot’s “goal” is to pick up PVC pipe and place it on a reef structure, then take off the kickball algae and place it in a net. While the competition may seem straightforward, there are actually two different types of robot operation, adding to the complexity for competitors.

“The first 15 seconds is autonomous, where it is fully computer coded. There is no human interaction at all with the robot. That’s where our programmers will program it to do everything it would in the teleop (teleoperation) where humans control it, but fully on its own. And then in the teleop stage, which is the last two or so minutes of the match, the robot, the human controllers take control of that. Our drive team, one student is moving it with the Xbox controller, and then the other one is actually using the arms and manipulator to intake the game pieces and then place them as well,” said Martin.

The regional competition will take place from March 20 to 22. If you would like to watch, follow this link.

They are also hosting a silent auction on Friday, March 28 at 5 P.M. at the Denfeld commons.