Imagine being able to program a robot to perform complex tasks by itself, running simply on code.

Thats exactly what a team of students from Anaconda and Butte high schools imagined, leading to their winning performance at the state robotics competition.

Last week, some of Montanas best and brightest students converged on Montana State University grounds to put their brains and robots to the test.

After months of intense planning, programming and construction, Robolution, made up of students from Butte High School and Anaconda High School, walked away with the top trophy.

The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Organization (FIRST) Tech Challenge is a global robotics competition.

Students in seventh through 12th grade are challenged to design, build, program and operate a robot to compete in head-to-head challenges with competitor's robots doing specific tasks.

The competition is designed to help students realize the value of hard work, innovation and sharing ideas.

Robolutions win last Friday means earned it the sole Montana spot at the global FIRST Tech Challenge in Houston this April.

I have to give all the credit to the kids who put in the hard work. Im just really proud of them, said team coach Carlton Nelson, who was sporting a green Mohawk during Wednesdays robotics practice at Anaconda High, where he teaches science. They've spent many, many hours of researching and looking, designing, rebuilding and testing. And they really got that whole engineering process down.

Nelson established Robolution two years ago. He said last Friday was the teams second appearance at the FIRST Tech Challenge state competition and that he did not expect the team to win.

It was very shocking. Just a surreal experience, Nelson said. We just didnt know what we were doing last year. The students built a robot that could do the task but it wasnt fast enough. It looked like a kit robot rather than something ... they constructed themselves.

Nelson said Robolution finished in 36th place at last years state competition. But with the help of a grant, the team still traveled to Houston to watch the competition.

We went and watched and I think that really inspired the kids," Nelson said.

Each season, the robots are challenged with a different task. This year, the teams had to build robots to play a sophisticated field game. The game is played on a 12-foot square field with approximately one-foot high walls. The challenge includes a 30-second autonomous period, a two-minute driver-controlled period and end game scoring. During the autonomous period, robots operate using only pre-programmed instructions developed by team coders.

Nelson said that last year, other coaches told him, "Don't worry, you're going to grow fast. The first year is your year to figure out what this is all about.

In Montana, teams can advance from a qualifying tournament to the state competition not only by earning points on the robot playing field, but also by competing in judged awards for their robot design, engineering notebooks, programming and outreach efforts off the field programming.

Nelson said Robolution went to the two qualifying tournaments offered in Montana. The first one was held in Butte, and we qualified for state then and got the design award for best design. Then we went to the second qualifier in Helena to practice, and we were actually on the winning alliance at that time and we got the design award there, too, he explained.

When Robolution traveled to the state contest, Nelson said he privately expected it would only win a design award, or a control award.

There are two really, really competitive and good teams. One is the Redneck Robotics from Sun River and the other one called Fusion from Helena. Both teams have gone on to worlds. Fusion, for example, goes to worlds almost every year, Nelson explained. So to be competitive as a second-year team was gonna be a hard challenge.

At the end of the state competition, organizers handed out awards to teams that excelled in design, teamwork, innovation and other accomplishments, as demonstrated in a teams engineering notebook and interview with judges.

I thought for sure we were going to win one of those and go home and be happy because we did good, Nelson said.

When all but the highest award the Inspire Award had been announced, Robolution members started to worry.

I thought we were going to go home without any kind of trophy or any kind of medal. I was really bummed, Nelson said.

He said the team assumed the highest award would either go to Redneck Robotics or Fusion. That team would then get to go on to the world event.

But then the announcer leaned into the microphone and said Robolution had captured the Inspire award.

The team was ecstatic; some members began crying, while others were shocked.

Nelson recalled, It was nuts! The kids were jumping and crying. Oh, it was a pretty neat experience. I've never been part of anything like that. It was really surreal. That whole weekend I would wake up thinking that this cant be real. Did we really do this? The kids told me they thought that, too.

He said even though it was the teams goal to win the Inspire Award and go to the world championship, that dream just seemed so far out of reach.

I just didn't really didn't think we had the potential to win the top team, said Nelson. But I was wrong, and thats why Im wearing this green hair.

Two months ago, Nelson told his team members they should start preparing for a new robotics competition hosted at Montana Tech, which overlapped with the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship.

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I told them that the schedule conflict shouldn't be a problem because we're not going to go to worlds, Nelson said.

So Robolution members made a bet with their coach.

They said, OK, if we go to worlds, youve got to get a Mohawk and turn it green, Nelson said. I didnt think we would be sitting in this position two months ago.

Nelson said he credits the team members' attitude and willingness to support each other for their success.

I think the biggest thing is that theyre all operating together as a team. They really came together cohesively as a team this year, and they really honed in on their strengths. So we've got kids that are really strong at building, and we've got kids that are really strong at programming, said Nelson. For them to find out their own niches and strengths in the team was just amazing to watch.

On Wednesday evening, Robolutions eight members two from Butte High School and the rest from Anaconda gathered in a classroom in Anaconda to prepare for the world competition.

In one corner of the room, Aaliyah Andersch was making design improvements to the teams remote controls and robot controlling info.

So for the past competitions, Ive just been carrying around the robots in a foam. So having this design will help us look more professional at worlds, said the Butte High School junior. Andersch joined Robolution last year and initially helped with the programming until she realized she was a much better designer.

I think having the skills to imagine things in your head and how they would work are some of the most important things to have as a designer, said Andersch.

Sitting next to Andersch, Kaden Dean stared at his laptop intently with his headphones on. He was concentrating on coding with Android Studio.

Dean is also a Butte High junior and a Robolution veteran. He started learning how to code at a summer program held at Montana Tech through Upward Bound, where hes learned Java, Scratch, Eclipse and Block in Java among other programming.

Dean joined Robolution when he found out that Upward Bound would support and fund a robotics team for Butte and Anaconda students.

I just stuck with it and its something extracurricular, which is better than doing nothing, Dean explained. My favorite part of working in this team is the fact that we can all work through our differences. Well have our arguments but we can still come back together and work things out, still have fun and not be super serious and hardcore all the time. Were just a group of friends who are just doing what we like.

At the other end of the room was the table of builders. Dean said hes dependent on them because he finds it difficult to program without seeing a visual build of the project.

Sitting with the builders was Caleb Thompson, a senior at Anaconda High School, who is the team captain and a programmer.

At state, it was unfortunate that we didnt get to complete all the matches because of a static problem, Thompson explained as he drew a blueprint on a sheet of graphing paper. The wheels can create static electricity when the robot is rolling on the ground, and that could overload the system. Its like an energy shock, and when that happens you cant control the robot.

Across the table from Thompson, William Barrington explained how theyre tinkering with the robots chassis and re-positioning the motors.

Caleb, last year, was coding the robot the night before the competition. So for him to take on the coding a little more in depth this year and with more background was really good for the team because he knows what hes doing, said Barrington, also a senior at Anaconda. For me, between programming or building, it was a no-brainer. Im pretty good at thinking in 3-D so I can look at something and say that thing is going to run into that.

Another builder at the table is Jaiden Connors, a sophomore at Anaconda High. He said his favorite part of being a builder is problem-solving and figuring out how to make things work.

This year, weve had a lot more teamwork and worked better together. And I think we knew more about how everything works, Connors said. He explained that while the teams are judged on their robots performance and completion of tasks, other qualities like sportsmanship, ability to follow rules, and team outreach all get factored into which team becomes the overall winner.

Team outreach is typically done by the scouts. Andrew Werner, a sophomore at Anaconda High and the newest member of Robolution, is one of them.

I help scout, so I go around and see what other teams are capable of and I try to see if we can maybe form an alliance with them later on, explained Werner.

Connors said scouts like Werner play an essential role in the team. A scout has to go talk with other teams and see how they can work well with our team. And if you choose your alliances right, you have a better chance of making it to the finals round, he said.

It brings all of the teams together and forces individual teams to think outside the box, he concluded.

As the team prepares for the world championship in April, some members are having mixed feelings, especially the seniors.

It feels really good to end my high school career like this, but Im also dreading the moment when its done, said Thompson. Like, I was really sad going into state because I thought we wouldnt get to come here any more and work on the robot. But winning state gives us a couple more months.

Barrington, the only other senior on the team, said winning a spot at the world championship means a lot for Anaconda. Its like our first state championship for literally anything in a while I think its our first state championship since three years ago, which was in wrestling, I think.

Next up is fundraising. Robolution will have to come up with funds to pay for their trip to the world contest in Houston.

Were going to have to rely a lot on local businesses and the community, said Thompson.

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Butte-Anaconda robotics team beats Montana, takes on the world - Montana Standard