BotsIQ Wins Big at WCTC Competition

Post date: May 15, 2019 11:48:01 AM

By: Kelsey Alder, Staff Writer

Posted May 15th, 2019

BotsIQ, or just Bots is a club in which teams take aluminum bar stock, sheet aluminum or sheet steel, and electronic RC car components to make a fighting “bot” which competes in a competition held at Waukesha County Technical College. This year the Slinger Bots team five bots to the competition. The actual competition has a bracket that decides which bots fight each other. The actual fights are pretty simple, each bot is laid on either side of an arena (steel floor with clear plastic walls) and they fight for three minutes. If a bot is immobilized for 10 seconds they lose, and the driver can also tap out at any time, but none of the teams did so. For every match a team wins they get a blue plastic token. Then there is an acrylic trophy for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the competition as well as for the documentation the team provided for their bot. The documentation details the process of building the bot from the design phase through testing. Pillsbury Doughboi won 1st place for documentation, while Samaritan Mk. III got 3rd place as well as 1st place for the competition. But putting the victories aside, everyone had a lot of fun and it was a valuable experience as well. Since most people in BotsIQ are interested in doing something with engineering, manufacturing, electronics, etc. later in life it was very useful to get that experience and learn more about those topics. There were a couple people in the club that knew a lot about the RC car parts and the electrical aspect of the bot, most of the people in Bots had at least a basic understanding of the manufacturing and metal fabrication of the bot. for those members of the club that did not have as much experience or hadn't taken any tech ed classes yet, BotsIQ provided them an opportunity to quickly acquire those skills without having to do it in a classroom setting. Overall BotsIQ is great for people who want to have fun creating things and making them function. It is a great opportunity to learn various new skills and have a good time doing so.