CIRC 10 A Big Success

If you were near the Badlands Community Facility over the past weekend you may have noticed a number of trucks and trailers in the parking lot, or some interesting robotic vehicles around.

This past weekend the Canadian International Rover Challenge was held from Friday, August 7th through Monday, August 10th, celebrating their 10th year of bringing the event to the Drumheller Valley. Justin Gerein one of the organizers of the event for all 10 of the years it has been held in Drumheller, was very pleased with the 10th edition. “It was a great year. We’re very excited that this is the tenth Canadian International Rover Challenge that we’ve held. We ended up with 28 attending teams and a lot of interest, we can definitely continue growing the event. A big part of the event, as organizers, was looking at the infrastructure and tasks necessary to grow the event.”

With the continued success of the event over the past decade, Gerein and his team do hope to continue to grow the event yet keep it manageable. “Our concern is how do we create opportunities for students, so what does that size needs to be so teams and students are not at home, waiting, unable to go to competitions and experiencing these kind of learning events. What that number looks like, we’re not specifically sure right now but we are always looking at how we not compromise the experience for the students, while also continuing to grow.”

One of the teams participating in the event this year was the team from the University of Dayton, from Dayton, Ohio. Nathaniel Wappman, as the spokesperson for their team, shared that their team loved the experience. “It has been amazing. It is my second competition and the team’s third competition and it has been a great experience. We have a lot of new members this past year, so it has been great seeing them come up and having fun.”

The University of Dayton team was in the rover tug a war competition. Wappman and their team were surprised to even be in the final. “We really had no clue what it would be like going into it. I was surprised we got through the first rover. Seeing our wheels pop up, that was pretty scary, but we held our own.”

The plans are already in play for next year’s event here in the Drumheller Valley and Gerein shares that they could always use more volunteers for the weekend. “We always need more volunteers to support the weekend. We already booked and ready to go next year. We worked with the Town this year, to find some new sites. We have all new locations that we used this year and are looking forward to coming back next year.”

If you are interested in helping out next year, visit their website or you can always send them an email. Congratulations to the overall winners from Carleton University.