It’s cool enough that high schools have robotics teams. It’s icing on the cake that one of Southwest Minneapolis’ teams is going to the World Championships this week.

Ultraviolet 2129, Southwest High School’s robotics team, is taking a 24-hour bus ride to Houston to compete in the FIRST Championship from April 16-19. FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit that operates numerous engineering competitions for middle and high school students.

Southwest High’s robotics team first went to the world championships in 2022 and again last year when they also won the Minnesota State High School League championship. The robotics team originally formed in 2007 but took on a new life in 2022.

A core group of five students began working together virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many members are now close to graduating, so the team is working on transferring skills to younger members of the team.

A CAD workstation in the robotics team work area at Southwest High School. Photo by Melody Hoffmann

Alena Pfeifer, a sophomore and the team’s assistant captain, said she was inspired to get into robotics through the Minneapolis Public Schools’ GEMS-GISE STEM Academy.

“I did that when I was in fifth grade,” Pfeifer said. “Then we had an engineering class in middle school one year.”

This year’s competition is water themed, and challenges students to build a robot to remove algae from a reef and place pieces of coral on it. The algae is represented by playground balls and the coral are PVC pipes. Students had seven weeks to build the robot.

The robot that the Ultraviolet team built is also autonomous for the first 15 seconds it operates during competition.

“Our programmer is one of the best, if not the best programmer in the entire world,” the team’s captain Camerson Dykoski said, referring to Rain Heuer. “We have cameras on the robot that can track the AprilTags, which are basically QR codes on the field to track position of the robot.”

The team’s robot, named “Marina,” has already won the Autonomous Award at the Great Northern Regional and the Innovation in Control Award at the Minnesota North Star Regional competitions.

The Southwest Robotics team robot, “Marina,” ready for competition. Photo courtesy of Southwest High School Robotics

Even though this year’s challenge is focused on cleaning up the ocean’s environment, the educational focus is on overall engineering and robotics.

“We're learning, not specifically, how to clean a coral reef in real life,” Pfiefer clarified. “The point is that we're learning these technical skills that we can use in future.”

Pfiefer said she wants to use these skills to become a biomedical engineer and has been learning more about computer-aided design to use towards that goal. Dykoski said they want to be an Imagineer at Disney.

I love the thought and design that goes into building the rides,” Dykoski said. “I want to be able to design those kinds of rides.”

The FIRST Robotics Competition will be available to livestream on Twitch TV.  For those watching, Ultraviolet 2129 will be part of the Blue Alliance.

Students who are interested in robotics can get involved though FIRST's tech challenges that are less intense than building a robot from scratch.

“It's less of a commitment, but it's still robotics, and they can get their hands on a robot,” Dykoski said. FIRST also offers a robotics Lego League.

Washburn High School is also home to a robotics team which meets Tuesdays and Thursdays after school during the robotics season.