From June 10 to 12, the Red Alert Robotics team will travel to Lawrence North to participate in IRI, or Indiana Robotics Invitational, which is an annual offseason robotics competition involving teams from around the world.
The team will compete with their robot from last season, with which they finished as a finalist in a district competition, and qualified for the World championships. Receiving an invitation to the competition is a testament to their success.
“IRI in my opinion is the most competitive robotics competition for FIRST teams,” sophomore Austin Petkovich said. “Competing in it is a statement to the world that our robot is unique, effective, and successful. I enjoy IRI because I think it is an eye opening experience to the best teams. Unlike Worlds, the competition at IRI got there solely based off their robot.”
With about half the team leaving the program at the end of summer, the invitational will serve as the first instance for the next wave of members to make their own mark as a team.
“I believe that if we do [well] at IRI, it will be a major confidence boost, considering that it feels like the team is very empty without the seniors. It will be understandable that if we don’t do as well, the entire team will see it as a learning experience,” junior Minh Thu said.
The competition can also be viewed as an opportunity for the team to spread their brand through their performance, and to learn what other teams are doing as well.
“IRI has all of the best teams from around the world, which really shows how diverse the program is,” Petkovich said. “At IRI, we can not only spread our name and what we do, but also learn what the best of the best do around the world. We can learn things like how other teams build and design their robot, what they do in their community and overall just gain more perspective as to how other teams make it through the season compared to just Indiana teams.”
The team will be looking to continue the success they achieved in the previous season by sticking to their strengths and scouting potential teammates well, making sure they leave the competition with success.
“I think our robot will perform well in competition,” Petkovich said. “We designed our robot to be extremely good at one thing and one thing only, so it should perform as we expect it to. To win this competition, we will need to use the strengths and weaknesses of the teams at the competition to help us be the most optimal during the matches.”
IRI is unique as it exposes the team to elite competition, serving as a learning experience, without the usual stress of an in-season competition, allowing teams more freedom in evaluating their talent for next year.
”I personally see it as just a more lax version compared to an actual in-season (competition), seeing as how IRI doesn’t have any robot [inspection]. However, it’s unique as it helps act like an evaluation for the team right now, to see how we would perform without the seniors,” Thu said.
