Camas robotics team qualifies for January meet

Camas — The Mechanickidz, a FIRST Lego League robotics team, qualified Dec. 2 to compete in the Intel Oregon Championship tournament in January. The Mechanickidz was the only competing team with two awards, including first place in robot performance. The team was third runner-up in the overall competition. The team has practiced since the end of summer, said coach Jeff Hendricks. Part of the time was spent understanding the missions for the robot challenge, strategizing the robot development, learning about hardware and software development of the robot and fine-tuning the one-of-a-kind creation. The goal was to have the robot complete as many successful missions as possible in the robot food-factor challenge. The students performed well at the competition and had a great experience, said Hendricks.