Escanaba hosts district FIRST Robotics Competition

ESCANABA, Mich. (WLUC) - High school robotic teams are battling for the top spot in the very first district competition of the year.

From Escanaba to Calumet and even Lower Michigan, 39 schools built robots to compete this weekend in the FIRST Robotics Competition.

“You never really expect it this big of a deal,” said Caroline Furmanski, the scouting co-captain for the Escanaba Robomos. “We fill up the multi-purpose room, the big gym, the cafeteria.”

Knight Vision from Liggett in Grosse Pointe, who won Worlds last year, traveled all the way to Escanaba to put their robot to the test.

“We got our robot done at week three and we just tested it and tested it and made adjustments to operations so we build on top of it so our robot is at peak performance,” said Nathaniel Caudill, part of the building team for Liggett Knight Vision.

The goal of this year’s competition is to collect as many purple cubes and yellow cones as possible and end the round on the platform.

“We also want to be fast so we put as many of these pieces where they need to be before time runs out,” said Luke Yoshida, the scouting captain for Liggett Knight Vision.

Robotics teams say they are not only learning engineering skills, but also soft skills that will carry them beyond high school.

“Whether we’re coding, or we’re working to build the robot, we learn a lot of communication,” said Furmanski. “We learn a lot about working as a team.”

The tournament started Friday morning and continues Saturday at 9 a.m.

District competitions will continue throughout Michigan and qualifying teams will compete at the state level in Saginaw.

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