Team Titanic hits the big Ice Cubed

NNSRI Team 1305b “Team Titanic” made their inaugural voyage at this weekend in the Southern Ontario Championship Vex tournament. Photos provided.

NNSRI Team 1305
News Release

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The Near North Student Robotics Initiative, Team 1305 “Ice Cubed” and Team 1305b “Team Titanic” from Northern Secondary School competed this weekend in the Southern Ontario Championship Vex tournament. The mentorship provided by NNSRI helped our new team enjoy a successful first competition, winning three of their matches.

Students from the existing North Bay team visited Northern Secondary in September. Their presentation resulted in the formation of a new team under the mentorship of teacher Andrea Bain, John Hervieux and community mentor Eric Albers. Assistance was provided regarding game strategy, programming and engineering from the experienced members of NNSRI.

The St. Catherines competition served up tough opposition with last year’s world championship team dominating the event. At first, the rookie team seemed unsinkable, winning their first three matches and rocketing to a top seed of 8th before hitting the iceberg of tough experienced teams.

Rookie teams have a steep learning curve and this team worked hard to build their robot in a short time span of only 9 weeks. “It wasn’t easy, this being our first time building a robot. In fact, we had to rebuild our robot 6 times”, said Titanic field coach, Jessica Leblanc. The team felt that they had accomplished more than they expected and all team members were proud of their performance.

Two new drivers with NNSRI also experienced their first major competition this weekend. Mackenzie Willis, a grade 8 student at W.J. Fricker and Anthony Caliciuri, a grade 9 student at Chippewa Intermediate and Secondary School were excited about the matches. Although Mackenzie had previous experience in the FIRST Lego League, he felt the atmosphere was different at this level of competition. “I had a lot of fun, though” he commented. Training and mentoring of the junior members is another essential component to this long established team. The team improved their driving skills during the day but in the end, they were frozen out of the finals.

Now in their eleventh year, the members of NNSRI have accomplished much. One of their first captains, Braden Stenning, met the group in Toronto on Friday, December 10. Now a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies, Braden gave students a tour of the facility and a summary of his research into robotic navigation. The team was surprised to learn that they face some challenges similar to the robots on Mars especially regarding the problem of localization or the ability of the robot to know where it is.

The two teams look forward to working together in the FIRST Robotics Competition that begins in January with an intense 6 week build season. They wish to thank their many community supporters and well wishers.

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