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The Rolla Regional Robotics team from St. James, Mo., won the 2015 annual Greater St. Louis Botball Tournament on Saturday, April 25, at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Nineteen teams competed in the Morris University Center Meridian Ballroom before a crowd of more than 150 throughout the day.

Botball teams score equally in three categories of documentation, seeding rounds and the double elimination tournament. In each category, teams earn a score of 0.0 to 1.0. The Rolla Regional Robotics team won the competition with a total score of 2.933 out of the possible 3.0. St. Mary’s School in Edwardsville was second, less than 0.15 points behind. Daniela Rus Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology from Terre Haute, Ind., finished third.

The game board changes each year around a central theme. This year’s theme was prospecting in the New Mexico desert. Robot tasks included scientific quests such as collecting minerals, sorting them, and moving the collected minerals to analysis areas.

There were also more whimsical aspects such as saving Botgal and her cousin, Botguy, who was turned into an alien pod, along with capturing some unidentified flying objects.

The robots built and programmed by the students are autonomous—traveling around the game board on their own, trying to earn as many points as possible within each two-minute round. Significant challenges of the competition board this year included a number of the higher-scoring items being positioned at high elevations and partitioned sides separated by a narrow “cave” of gold ore, with only a narrow space connecting each of them.

“Teams did extremely well this year,” said Gary Mayer, PhD, and assistant professor of computer science in the SIUE School of Engineering and the event organizer. “A large number of teams were successful at scoring the harder to get points. But they didn’t dominate. Teams racked up a lot of wins by being able to complete the simpler tasks consistently, too. This made for some truly interesting matches.

 “Over the years, I have noticed that the teams that do well in competition also do well in documentation. I believe this underscores the time and energy they’ve put into thinking about the problem and creating robust designs.”

Documentation points are earned through a team’s online submission during the weeks leading up to the tournament and from a presentation that student team members must give at the tournament. The Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland from Wichita, Kan., took the Outstanding Documentation trophy. Teams following closely behind included Rolla Regional Robotics, St. Mary’s, Edwardsville High School and Daniela Rus.

Uncontested seeding rounds were held in the morning. An average of points earned determined the teams’ placement in the double-elimination bracket. Seeding rounds demonstrated the hard work many teams put into developing an extraordinary range of arm designs to reach those high places and earned high points.

Rolla Regional Robotics was first in the seeding rounds. St. Mary’s and Daniela Rus were second and third, respectively.

Going into the semi-finals, the Rolla Regional Robotics team beat St. Mary’s. Edwardsville High School went into the semi-finals against Daniela Rus, each having suffered one loss, and Edwardsville proved triumphant.

In the next round, Edwardsville challenged St. Mary’s. In the battle between the two Edwardsville schools, St. Mary’s prevailed. This again pitted St. Mary’s against still undefeated Rolla Regional Robotics, and the Rolla team walked away as the undefeated winner of the double-elimination competition.

In addition to competition and documentation awards, teams are also given trophies and awards for demonstrating various aspects of their teaming abilities and robot design and implementation concepts. The Spirit of Botball went to Edwardsville High School who not only loaned a camera to a middle school team, but they also helped them with the code to use it.

The Keep It Simple Student (KISS) award went to the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, from Hot Springs, Ark., for the its simple and balanced offensive and defensive strategy and design.

Rolla Regional Robotics claimed the Overall Judge’s Choice for solid design and programming of an effective bucket system that could consistently pull in points, along with their excellent teamwork and great t-shirt design.

Photos: Upper Right - From Rolla Regional Robotics (L-R) Cheyenne Dalton and Rachel Hickle.

Middle - From East St. Louis Charter school (L-R) Darrion Loveless and Malik Peters.