Owatonna Robotics Team Wins Award at Region Event

The Owatonna High School robotics team recently competed at a regional event in Duluth. They came home with a "Creative Design" award.

The advisor for Owatonna's Rebel Alliance is Valerie Rose. She told KRFO radio in an email, "We made it to (the) finals, but our alliance did not win the region. We were awarded the 'Creative Design' award from the region, which was a pretty sweet award to get." Owatonna's Morgan Rappe earned the Safety Award for the region for her leadership and presentation on safety, Rose said.

A unique aspect of competition in robotics is that teams work together in the arena as an alliance against other alliances. That concept of assistance even expands to helping other teams with technical issues and sharing of tools. Rose said that Owatonna's Dakota Johnson assisted a team that had the wrong codes entered on their robot, "Dakota spent many hours along with a few other team members helping this team rebuild their robot so they could compete."

Owatonna has to wait for results from other regions before she knows whether OHS will advance to the Minnesota State High School League robotics competition. Owatonna has participated at state each of the past two years. This year's event will be May 21 at Williams Arena. There is no admission charge to attend.

Teams have been working since January to design and build a robot that can maneuver around obstacles and launch balls at a target. The OHS Magent posted a video of the robot in action.