The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

s v- bffishfeiiffl thursday march 29 2001 1 jri v s last month with mike is classmate dustin maeee by jerome watt special to the economist suntribune ost competitions are won through blood sweat and tears but this competition takes bionics oil and gears st andrews college competed for trie first time in the eighth annual robot ic games at centennial community college in scarborough last month forty students from the aurora pri- vate school spent 420 hoursbuilding a robot for the competition the team was also required to make a video and a website detailing the building process thecompetition coincided with- engineering week and promoters hoped it would encourage young adults to get involved in engineering this years event was the robobiathloh where each teams robot had to navigate obstacles and fire on targets at the end of the course c s we are trying to start a trend at our school said st andrews student alex tse as he and a group of other students huddled around their robot outside the gymnasium where the competition had the atmosphere of most major ath letic events complete with mascots cheerleaders and bleachers full of fering fans the teams robot is about three feet high andthree feet widethe top fea- r tiures a bin wjth a slight incline on either- issidelhat allows squashballs to be fun- heued into the rqbofs gurithe barrelbf me gun is mounted below die bin and is aimed using a flashlight the entire device is operated by remote control the students rofiedout their robot for a test run before the competition as with any major event its all in the preparation which involved a lot of problemsolving on the part of st andrews students the budding robotic engineers had to overcome a multitude of problems to get the robot to work the team had to use ingenuity to overcome the limitations of the equipment from the beginning we had to decide whether or not to use a track sys- tern or a wheel system said andrew gosbee team leader for the group we decided to go with the track sys tem because we needed more stability these tracks were built for control not speed the team had to use ingenuity to overcome the limitations of the equip ment the boards couldnt handle that much current gosbee said it would overheat them we ended up having to attach relays to them the team also had to work without proper equipment we didnt have a machine shop to use tse said while the other students did some lastminute repairs on the robot with duct tape we had to use the kiss rule richard khoury found duct tape use ful oh if s a lifesaver he said