14-03-2025
Denver students to compete in FIRST Robotics world championship
DENVER (KDVR) — The future of robot battling is in safe hands.
A group of 43 Denver students from several schools with a passion for STEM traveled to Minnesota to put their robot to the test in a regional qualifier.
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They left Colorado as qualification hopefuls, with dreams of heading to the world championships in Houston. They returned back to their home state having realized that dream and will participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship in April.
With April right around the corner and plenty of work left to do, FOX31 spoke with Internal Business Lead Jay Belasco in a Zoom interview.
Belasco started with the team, Brute Force, in his freshman year. Now, in his fourth year, he said things have changed drastically.
'The biggest thing where we've grown over the years is our project management. We went from, you know, a lot of sticky notes on a whiteboard of what we needed to get done to a real organized Gantt chart style system. Our leadership team meets weekly … We go over all of our milestones and assess where we're at, to get where we need to be,' said Belasco.
Although Brute Force started in 2007, like many things, Belasco said COVID-19 affected the team. Knowledge of work from prior teams being wiped out left them with a program that needed plenty of rebuilding post-pandemic.
'Our team kind of hit a brick wall in 2020 with COVID, we lost a lot of knowledge. My freshman year, we had four veteran members on the team, so we had to really work to get to where we are today and regain all of that knowledge,' said Belasco.
When the team heads to Houston, they will take on other world-class robots, full of ever-evolving components and software, to compete at the highest level. While most people think of the cage-fighting BattleBots when they hear robot battles, FIRST Robotics focuses on problem-solving and can involve games of offense and defense, taking turns shooting at or defending a basketball hoop, for example.
'Every year in January, the FIRST Robotics Competition team get a game that has different, you know, ways to score. You can think of it like a sport. We've had basketball games in the past… Your robot is in an alliance with three other robots that compete against a different alliance, and you're trying to score points as fast as you can,' said Belasco.
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He said it's a little bit like BattleBots, but you definitely won't be destroying the other team's robots because that would make quite the dent in the pocket of the high schoolers, who are responsible for fundraising tens of thousands of dollars to participate in these events.
FIRST Robotics Competition will also be holding a qualifying event in Denver from March 20 to March 22. Although they have already qualified, Belasco and team will still participate to try and refine and buff out any last-second issues.
Belasco said the reason they traveled to Minnesota to qualify was to try and get as many reps as possible so they can gather the most information on what works or what needs improvement and to give themselves the best shot possible to qualify for the worlds.
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The next steps in the team's journey will be to fundraise as much as they can before Houston. Belasco said 85% of the team is on a free or reduced-cost lunch program, so their robotics team has participation with absolutely no charge.
The team leaves for Houston on April 15 and 16 and will return to Colorado on April 20. More information on Brute Force, fundraising and the FIRST Robotics Competition can be found on the team's website.
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