HAMILTON-WENTWORTH CATHOLIC DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD
HWCDSB Robotics Teams win at CNE

It is not a stretch to find a bunch of high school students at the CNE on the last weekend before school begins, but would you believe they would go for 3 days straight, putting in 12-hour days, talking to crowds of complete strangers about their robots and competing at a FIRST Robotics Competition?

This past weekend, Bishop Ryan Catholic Secondary School's Celt-X Robotics team (5406) and St. Mary Catholic Secondary School's MakeShift Robotics team (4039) competed at, and won, the Robots@CNE event. The three-day event at the CNE saw around 20 teams from across Ontario compete with their robots from this past FIRST Robotics Competition season (or newly built robots). This isn't combat robotics, instead, robots, each weighing up to 125 lbs and capable of moving at 15ft/s, played a 3 on 3 full contact sport', with a new game each year. This year, robots had to pick up, shoot and score oversized tennis balls in a 9-foot-high goal and then climb and traverse a set of monkey bars reaching over 7 feet in the air.

Taking place in the CNE Gaming Garage sponsored by AMD, in the Enercare building, the event had a constant stream of visitors, with tens of thousands of people stopping to interact with the teams and observe the matches over the 3 days.

"This year's team was comprised of students from all grades, but only 2 of the 35 on our roster had ever been to an official competition," said mentors Brendan Simons, Chris Pinto and Michelle Ciavarella.

"We had finally reached the pinnacle where we had students with 4 years experience, but lost many to graduations during the pandemic. We were quite fortunate to have had a really engaged, eager, dedicated, group of students join our team this year. Their learning and ability excelled beyond our highest hopes and we were extremely proud to be able to sit back and watch as they worked as one well-oiled machine over the weekend. We are so, so proud of all of them!"

Celt-X captained the winning alliance with their robot, Tails' (after the Sonic character). During the official season, Tails was the winner of the Waterloo and Windsor events, and semi-finalist at the World Championship in Houston, Texas. Tails was designed, built and programmed between January and April and features over 100 custom fabricated parts all designed and made in-house.

"What I appreciated the most about this event was that everyone had the chance to explore different jobs and responsibilities throughout the competition and expand their skills and knowledge of this amazing sport," said Grade 10 student Michelle.

"Our work at the CNE was not only able to demonstrate the importance of each job, but also emphasize the great necessity for teamwork. Just like how every part of the robot, down to its nuts and bolts, is significant to its ability to function, the talents and hard work of every team member on Celt-X is what has gotten us to where we are today."

The Celt-X robotics team spends endless hours teaching students how to create manufacturing designs using computer aided design (CAD), and how to manufacture parts operating our CNC routers, laser cutters, lathes, mills, 3D printers, and many other manufacturing tools. They assemble, test, and reiterate until the design is just right. Then their robot is turned over to their programming students to add in all the functionality to get the robot to drive, operate its functions, run in autonomous mode and score multiple points before it is turned back to the drive team to practice, practice, practice!

This year's competition robot took 6,000 hours to complete.

This summer, students and mentors of Celt-X put in over 1,500 hours at the Board's build facility, the Robodrome, to create a second robot, Swervy'. This robot implements a swerve drive system - one where the wheels can pivot freely - allowing the robot to drive in any direction - even sideways! Swervy (9406) was also entered into the CNE competition and proved to be a hugely successful proof of concept. Even though it was an off-season project and did not have the full functionality of Tails, it was one of the best scoring robots at the event and made it to the semi-finals.

Robotics is one of the few sports' where almost every student goes pro'. Students, guided by mentors, learn a wide variety of STEM skills, are spurred on by the thrill of competition, and grow to be gracious professionals. While the teams compete to win, they simultaneously help other teams to reach their fullest potential. At the CNE, teams could be seen assisting each other with repairs, loaning parts, and helping each other make improvements. Even right before the finals match, teams helped their opponents to ensure that everyone was able to play at their best.

"This was the first Rapid React event where we competed with 2 robots," said Grade 9 student Abby.

"Getting to talk to thousands of people about what we've all worked hard for was really rewarding."

Celt-X will be hosting a golf tournament on October 2, to raise funds for their upcoming season. Any interested golfers or sponsors can visit golf.5406.ca for more information. Robots are expensive to build, and these programs would not be possible without the generous support of corporate sponsors such as Arcelor-Mittal Dofasco, John Deere and HATCH.

Celt-X and MakeShift will be co-hosting their own off-season competition, the STEMley Cup, in Hamilton, on October 29th and 30th. More information is available at stemleycup.ca.

Submitted by Celt-X Robotics