Katy ISD team heads to global robotics championship

More than 30,000 people from all over the world have landed in Houston this week to watch roughly 600 teams compete in the FIRST Championship, a global youth robotics competition.

One of those teams is CRyptonite, a group of about 70 students from Cinco Ranch High School.

This week, CRyptonite will compete against hundreds of students from at least nine other countries at FIRST Championship, a four-day robotics competition that celebrates innovation in science, technology, engineering and math careers.

The theme this year celebrates space, with categories such as Deep Space, Rover Ruckus, Into Orbit and Mission Moon.

Anuraag Routray, a team leader with CRyptonite, has been on the team for three years, but has been involved with robotics since middle school. The team’s moto is, “”Engineering a Path to our Future,” according to the team website.

“We’re excited,” the 17-year-old said. “We got a program that has had a lot of success. I think our team is just really excited to go there and show what we can do. It’s always critical for us to be as successful as possible at these events.

“We’re nervous, but we’re more excited,” he said.

The competition works this way: three teams compete against three other teams. During qualification matches, pairings are completely random, so a team from China might compete against a team from Canada or the United States, Routray said.

Teams are scored by points, and whichever team scores the most points through the qualification round wins the game, he said. Teams can also create alliances with other teams and then go into an elimination round, he said.

“The way the world championship is structured for the high school sport, is that we have these preliminary or qualification matches for the first two days,” Routray said. “and then Saturday is all elimination matches.”

CRyptonite has competed in the FIRST Championship before, Routray said.

“We’ve always gotten to the quarterfinals or the semifinals. But this year, we’re looking to go further,” he said.

CRyptonite’s robot this year stands out, Routray said, because it’s able to perform task on the basketball-size field more efficiently.

Mark Greenlaw, FIRST’s VP of Strategy and Impact, said the championship is about more than building robots.

“This championship that in Houston is really the culmination of these students’ school year working with FIRST – the end result, Greenlaw said. “They have put in many, many, many hours with their adult mentors working on their robot project and other things related to the robot competition.”

For six weeks prior to the competition, teams diligently worked with adult mentors to build their robots, Greenlaw said.

“The challenge is meant to introduce a lot of real-world problems, he said. “The teams are working together collaboratively, building their team building skills, their interpersonal skills. They are tackling hard problems. Half the time they face failure and have to persevere and overcome failure. They learn that skill.”

The robotics competition is also meant to promote STEM-related education, he said.

“The overall goal of FIRST is to inspire interest and excitement around science, technology, engineering and math and also to really develop communication, collaboration with the end result being that we’re building better citizens for tomorrow, building a better future,” Greenlaw added.

As for Routray, he’s decided he wants to go into a STEM career when he grows up.

“My primary interest right now is in chemistry, so I’m thinking chemical engineering,” he said. “And I would say that robotics directly contributed to my interest in going into this. I don’t think I would have been interested in pursuing a STEM career if I hadn’t been into that.”