ABOVE: Technician Tyler Slama, left, and human player Wylee Frederiksen, right, place the robot on the field at the Lake Superior Regional in Duluth. Fairmont placed second at the regional, owing to their robots prowess in the challenge and its tendency to break down before the end. Currently the team is ranked 40th in the world. Submitted Photo.

FAIRMONT – Halfway through the season, Fairmont Robotics has had its fair share of good and bad outcomes.

When they started their creation of the robot, which shoots foam balls into a target, Coach Sam Viesselman said things went from looking easy to difficult over time.

“We’ve shot balls before,” he said. “The target we have to hit is really large. The material and the way they handle it is pretty easy compared to game pieces we’ve had in the past. As we dug deeper into the challenge, we started to realize holding a lot of them was really important, and our team was trying to target shooting 15 of them per second into the goal. Once you started putting those parameters on it, the challenge got harder and harder for us.”

This led to them falling a week or two behind schedule and looking to catch up in time for their first big test.

Their first of two regional competitions, Duluth, ended with a second-place finish. It’s an event that welcomed more than 80 teams to compete in the same challenge. Since they were so behind, Viesselman said they had to make do with what they had.

“We had to bring what we had to Duluth and really try our best to keep it running,” he said. “A lot of the Duluth event was a battle of survival, where we’d get on the field, we would almost hit our goal of 15 balls per second and holding lots of fuel, but then we would break. I don’t think we finished any of our matches in Duluth with our robot fully functioning.”

How were they able to finish second if this was the case? Viesselman said the robot was so competitive when it operated successfully that even though it would break down and not complete full rounds, it would do enough to continue advancing them.

“We would be playing with a fully functioning robot for maybe the first quarter to the first half of the match,” he said. “The last half, we’re functioning somewhere between 80 percent to 0 percent. Because we set our goals so high with our targets for the robot, when it was actually running, we were able to score a lot of points, and that was enough to carry us through all the way to the finals.”

ABOVE: The Fairmont Robotics 2026 competition robot can be seen throwing balls into the target at the Lake Superior Regional in Duluth. Submitted photo.

It was also enough to qualify them for Worlds. Viesselman said a certain percentile of overall teams are selected for the big final competition, from around the world. Currently, Fairmont is ranked around 40th in the world, which Viesselman said is high enough to qualify within that percentile.

At this point in the season, Viesselman said his students have totally bought into what the team as a whole is looking to do.

“Really putting a lot of thinking about the we before me,” he said. “Students who didn’t necessarily know each other when the season started becoming genuine friends. We have a lot of times where we’re at the shop working on things, and students won’t have anything to work on, but they’re still hanging out because they just want to hang out and talk with their friends.”

The students have also been putting the work in to represent the team and robotics as a whole outside the competition scene.

“Our team goal this year is to be very competitive, not just on the field, but off the field,” Viesselman said. “Outreach, spreading awareness of robotics and STEM to younger kids out in our community. Some people on our team have been very involved with political advocacy, going to the capitol and advocating for our legislators to put more resources toward STEM in the classroom, funding after-school programs and starting new teams and supporting teams in our area.”

Today, the team is on its way to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the second regional competition, which will see practice Thursday and competition Friday and Saturday. With Duluth and a fervent three weeks of work in their sails, Viesselman said they are looking to see marked improvements.

“We’re really focused on keeping our robot running throughout all of our matches, and really trying to reach the potential we saw glimpses of in Duluth and seeing that more consistently. Once we do that, we’ll have a group meeting and decide if we want to make any more significant upgrades for the World Championships, or if we’re happy with where we’re at.”

Worlds will take place in Houston, Texas from April 29 to May 2. For more information or updates on the team, visit facebook.com/Team2847/ or fairmontrobotics.com/.