Transporting cargo off the planet Primus was the goal for the DURT (De Smet Ultimate Robotics Team) in their Regionals competition which was held at the Chaifetz Arena on March 14-16. The competition partnered with Boeing to create a fictional planet in which the robots had to transport cargo.

“It is a team of three robots vs three robots that were staged on a fictitious planet called Planet Primus,” Robotics Moderator Anthony Strawhun said. “We had to take hatch panels which are basically plastic discs with velcro on the end of them and cargo which were exercise balls and load them onto rockets and cargo ships to get them off the planet.”

During round-robin Chim Chim (The name of the DURT’s robot) finished with six wins, six losses, and one tie, finishing 22nd out of the 48 teams. The elimination rounds were ready to begin, starting with an alliance selection.

“We were drafted by the 5th alliance as their second selection for the eliminations rounds,” senior Jacob Deighton said. “We were super excited to be picked and get to continue our season with two awesome teams.”

DURT and the other two teams of the alliance began to battle it out with another alliance in the quarterfinals. The final challenge was for their robot to climb up levels and each level gave them more points. However, they were eliminated in the quarterfinals.

“It was a bittersweet moment,” senior Russell Conley said. “For us seniors we saw our robot compete for the last time.”