The Rio Americano robotics team is looking to refine their bot for their next competition after taking fourth place in their first seasonal event at Pleasant Grove High School on March 15.

The team will head to the East Bay this weekend for their second competition, where they will look to increase their ranking points.

The competitions this season are coral reef themed; the robots have to place PVC-pipe “coral” at different heights and angles, for example.

“Our robot is focused on picking up game pieces and putting them into the highest scoring areas possible while having to focus on precision and speed,” designer and senior Julianne Meyer said.

Another game challenge the team is looking to master is the climb, in which the robot must hang from a cage for several seconds without its wheels touching the ground.

At the March 15 event, which included 37 regional teams, Rio was given the Creativity Award for the most inventive robot design. The judges particularly liked the robot’s intake setup, the part that allows the bot to pick up objects, senior Joshua Merri said.

Rio’s robot is unique because it has sensors that help position it more precisely.

But the team is still looking to improve their standing in the next competition.

“We basically know what went wrong,” Merri said. “We can go fix it. And once we go to Contra Costa, it will be way better. And we’ll hopefully win.”

Merri works in the pit, a fast-paced job that requires completing repairs mid-competition.

“Whenever our robot goes into a game and something breaks or loosens, they bring it back to the pit and we fix it up.”

One of the main challenges the Xbox-controlled robot faces is that it is mostly made of polycarbonate, which is lightweight but not strong. Using a ShopBot that can create cutouts from any computer design, the pit crew can fix damage, and once had to immediately repair the robot’s intake, which had fallen apart in a rough competition with other bots.

“We’re on a huge time crunch (during a competition) because we have our next match coming up,” Merri said.

Each team is typically matched with two others to form an alliance and to help block three other teams while they are trying to score. The groups are randomly formed after six qualification matches.

“Right before every match, you meet with your two teammates, and you go over game strategy and what you want to do,” Merri said. “You go over your team’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Meyer also said the team relies heavily on scouting during events. Robotics team members are dispatched to other teams’ pits to observe their robots and record data on them.

“During the matches I will be assigned a robot to look after and then I will input anything, like if they stop during the match, along with the points we score, so we can know by the end of it different data on other teams and who we will want to play with in the future,” Meyer said.