As the annual robotics competition gets closer,  junior Benjamin Dodge feels confident in himself and his entire team.

“I am feeling pretty good. I know we have a pretty strong team and I’m sure we’re going to do quite well,” said Dodge.

Advisor Trevor Paulson says the competition revolves around engineering activities and strategy sessions for point values.

“(The competition) is a steampunk based area with an airship. So we have to deliver gears to turn propellers and deliver balls which are considered fuel into a boiler, (however) we are not going for that. (Overall) we are delivering gears and concentrating on how to climb a rope. We will deliver gears for point values,” said Paulson.

Paulson says part of the competition requires the robot to complete activities on its own for 20 seconds.

According to Dodge, to build a robot, members divide into multiple groups to complete all the aspects of the robot.

“There’s a lot of stuff for every single station.  The (sections) I know of (are) programming, CAD- which is where you design the robot, and the build team. They’re all very in-depth, so you can only do one,” said Dodge.

According to Paulson, they are working on the mechanics and developing problem solving strategies.

“We will strictly be going towards rope climbing and gears because that is going to benefit us no matter what teams we may get paired with as well as doing some autonomous stuff,” said Paulson.

Paulson says his team already has strategies developed for the gears, rope climbing and robot building, but always recommends room for new ones as more time passes by.

“There are a number of different possibilities so they have to figure out an easy way to do something that can accomplish that task. And for the gears we have to figure out a way that we can deliver it, safely secure it and drive it to wear it needs to be and we can unload the gear,” said Paulson.

Overall, Dodge says he feels ready to compete in the competition later on in the spring.

“Right now to prepare myself, (I am) doing robotics stuff (like) learning how to build the robot. (My teammates)  seem very interested in robotics and they work pretty hard,” said Dodge.

The competition takes place after spring break April 6-8.