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CANFIELD -- "Ever since I was a little kid, I liked taking things apart and putting them back together," said Trumbull Career and Technical Center student Zachary Henderson, 19, of Hubbard.
Henderson drove his hand-built robot in the daylong VEX Robotics Competition at Mahoning County Career and Technical Center on Saturday.
More than 300 students on 50 teams from Trumbull and Mahoning counties, as well as the Akron and Cleveland areas, took part in the event.
Some local schools represented included TCTC, Poland, Struthers, Austintown, Lowellville, Leetonia and South Range, said Walter Barber, MCCTC engineering instructor.
This is the fifth year MCCTC has hosted the tournament, which has been going on for 13 years, Barber said.
"The competition itself is a lot of work to host, but I have really, really, good, dedicated students who have stepped up and run a lot of it for me," said Barber.
This year was the first that the arenas were fully wireless, said Barber, in part thanks to senior Matthew Byler's capstone project working with Raspberry Pi computers.
The competition revolves around a game called Turning Point, in which robots driven by students earn points by stacking caps, flipping flags, throwing balls and parking on a landing, explained Byler. At the end of the day, the top eight teams each picked a team to join them in a single-bracket elimination tournament. Of the 16 teams in the bracket, two come out as winner, Barber said.
The winning teams will go to the state tournament, scheduled for March 3, said Barber. Winners at the state level go on to worlds, which last year included some 400 teams from more than 40 countries.
Barber said teams from MCCTC have gone to state five of the six years they've participated in the tournament, and once they made it to worlds.
The key to a successful robot, Byler said, is the build and programming coming together.
"The builder and the programmer typically work very close. The programmer writes the program from scratch; there's no predetermined anything," said Byler.
He added that the builder has to know what will work best for the program that is written.
"I just like the idea of making stuff," said TCTC robotics programmer Brandon McGill. "With programming, you can do whatever you want. Basically, your imagination is the only thing that limits you."
McGill said it took him three weeks to build the base of his robot, and he's been improving it through trial and error ever since.
TCTC Robotics Club build captain Joel Anderson, 18, of Howland, was on hand to fix the robots if they broke during the competition.
"Something will go wrong," said Anderson.
He said there were malfunctions at "every single one" of the tournaments, but that was part of the sport.
Anderson said he is usually able to fix the bots on site with spare parts the students bring along. If necessary, the team usually brings a spare robot that can be substituted for a malfunctioning counterpart, he added.
Seven students of TCTC Robotics Club's nearly 20 members were at the tournament, including club secretary Kayleigh Rasey, 17, of Mineral Ridge, who helps the team survey the competition's robots to see what's working well.
"My role is to look up ideas and sketch them," she said.
Club historian Cody Stoker, 17, was there to drive one of the robots.
"We haven't done too bad today," he said, adding that for him, the competition was mostly about having fun.
This year, Brecksville Robotics from Broadview Heights was named tournament champion, with their two teams, Flapjacks and Dipstick.
avugrincic@tribtoday.com