By LANCE FLEMING
Abilene ISD Communications

It wasn’t long after the VEX Region V robotics championship meet ended in early March before ATEMS senior Javier Butz turned his thoughts to this weekend’s World Championship competition in Dallas.

The ATEMS robot had earned its spot in the competition ­– April 25-27 at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center – but Butz knew the robot the team took to that competition would have to be better than the one that competed in Abilene. So Butz and the rest of Team 9871T scrapped the robot it had been working on and working with since last August and built a new one in five weeks.

Wednesday morning, just before the team left for Dallas, Butz was finally ready to say they had a robot to compete in the World Championship meet.

“We built a new robot and changed almost everything in about five weeks,” Butz said. “Nothing on our robot is the same as on the one we had last month. We knew immediately after the regional competition in Abilene that we had to have a better robot to compete at the world championships.”

By Saturday evening, not long after the regional competition ended, Butz and his team had started brainstorming sketches, exchanging ideas and CAD files, and he had begun delegating duties to the team to build the robot. By Monday, the team started building the new robot that will debut Thursday in Dallas.

This robot has six motors on the base instead of four on the old robot, giving the machine more power to battle other robots and more speed when raising and lowering the hang arm. The new robot has six wheels instead of four for better and easier maneuverability.

Butz said the team’s driver, Jose Rico, has been practicing with the robot even as it’s being developed, changed, built, etc., and has found the new robot to be a much better machine to drive.

After arriving in Dallas on Wednesday, the team began practicing with the new robot, making only a few adjustments before beginning practice ahead of the competition.

“Every mechanism is working and is on the robot where it needs to be, so we feel good about it,” Butz said. “This has been a stressful month, but this is what we’ve been working toward. I’m anxious to see how it performs.”

Butz – who was with the ATEMS team when it qualified for the World Championships when he was a freshman – said the team’s goal is to surpass that team’s finish, which was 32nd in its group.

“We’re planning to surpass what we did the last time we were there,” Butz said. “Our No. 1 goal is to win our division, and since there are only 10 divisions, that would be a pretty big deal. That’s what we’re going there to do.”