Robots throwing rings and climbing chains? This sounds wild, but for many robotics teams in and around Missouri Cowtown is just that. Each team had two allies who they worked with to score more points than the other teams Oct. 19. 

The goal of the competition this year was to throw foam rings known as “notes” into a “Speaker” and an “amp.” The speaker was a tall box with a slot at the top for the robots to shoot the notes into the speaker, and the amp was a smaller box on the left of the speaker for robots to score into.

“The problem we have is we don’t have any of the experienced drivers going to Cowtown. We try using this as an opportunity to train our new drivers, so that’s why every match we have different drivers coming and rotating through and changing who can do it,” Thi Nguyen, Ed.D, the team’s head coach said.

Each round was split into three distinct periods, Automation, Driver and Endgame. During automation each robot was guided by its computer mounted onto the robot, and during the driver phase each team had an appointed driver who took over the robot’s controls and tried to score the most points possible during the time span of the match. In the last 30 seconds the robots will be able to score extra by climbing on chains. 

“It was very busy and a lot of different schools and teams,” freshman Kenna Martinez said. “So, it was really nerve wracking, but it was really funny because most of the teams were very friendly.”

During Cowtown, the Millenium Falcons’ robot “Shredder” had multiple malfunctions which had been known since last season. However, the team had little time to fix the robot.  They are building a new bot for next season any issues the old generation had will be with the new robot fixed.

“At our time in Cowtown we ran into old issues, new issues that we couldn’t really work around something that would take us hours to work on,” team manager Mitchell Harvey said.

Many of these issues were as simple as a broken part. During Cowtown, multiple quick fixes were made. The Millennium Falcons came in 37 out of 42 with a final score of 2-6-0.