Indiana Robotics Invitational organizers made sure that all who entered knew they were in the heartland. The smell of sweet corn wafted through the air around the venue’s main entrance at Lawrence Central High School, with a handful of the local team’s supporters grilling as fast as they could to keep up with demand.

Corn might not have been the primary reason about 60 FIRST robotics teams from the United States, Mexico and Canada converged at Lawrence Central on July 12 and 13, but it was decidedly popular, with 1,000 ears sold over the two days.

Jeffrey Smith is one of the organizers of the IRI competition and coaches the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township’s Kil-A-Bytes robotics team. He’s been involved in the annual off-season competition for about 20 years and said MSDLT cohosts it with Perry Meridian’s Cyber Blue and the TechnoKats from Kokomo.

“It started out kind of an Indiana thing 20 something years ago,” Smith said. “Right now, we have three countries (and) 19 states in Indiana for robots — and corn.”

Smith said U.S. teams traveled from as far away as Hawaii. Others didn’t have to go far, though. Besides the hosts, participating Indiana teams were the TechHOUNDS from Carmel, Tiger Dynasty from Fishers High School, Digital Goats from Warren Central, Red Alert Robotics from Center Grove, Harrison Boiler Robotics from West Lafayette, CyberTooth from Northwestern and SuPURDUEper Robotics from Purdue Polytechnic.

The competition is a round robin-style tournament, with teams randomly selected to play against other teams. For each match, three robots were on each side — blue versus red — and the robots had to collect hoops from the ground and put them into a goal within a certain time frame. They also could score points by hanging from a chain. The robots followed programmed commands for the first 15 seconds of each match. After that, they were driven remotely by team members.

One of the Kil-A-Bytes team members is Lawrence North incoming junior Keira Wright. She said she’s been interested in robotics since fifth grade. She joined the Kil-A-Bytes team last year and primarily worked on the robot’s mechanics and designing the intake — how the robot scooped up the hoops.

Wright said she enjoys the sportsmanship of robotics competitions.

“We’d rather beat a team at their best than a team at their worst, and our team — one of the things I like is … we bring spare parts for other teams and we try to be really generous and really helpful for other teams,” she said, adding that outreach is another important aspect of the team. “I just finished mentoring a bunch of middle schoolers and building little robots.”

Lawrence North incoming senior Jacob Kanable also just finished his first year with the team. He said he’s enjoyed developing his engineering skills, which he hopes to eventually study in college.

“I really like how (robotics) develops futures for everyone and teaches new skills from machining to programming,” he said. “It helps you meet new people with similar interests. Being part of a club is super social and being part of a worldwide thing is a super-different experience.”

Smith said the annual competition has been at Lawrence North or Lawrence Central high school nearly every year since MSDLT joined as a cohost. Renovations at the two high schools meant the invitational had to move off site in 2022 and 2023, so this is the first year back at IRI’s usual location.

According to the IRI website, the annual competition started in 2000 at the Kokomo Memorial Gymnasium with about 21 teams attending. It moved to Indianapolis in 2002, with Lawrence Township schools providing the venue. Smith said he and another organizer started grilled corn sales about 15 years ago.

“We cooked up a dozen ears of corn or something and it just grew from there,” he said. “(Now) I’m buying 1,000 ears of corn for two days.”

It’s become so popular, he said, there’s even a “corn cam” providing a live feed from the grill during the competition.

For more about the annual event, visit indianaroboticsinvitational.org.

IRI 2024 results:

Indiana Robotics Invitational organizer Jeffrey Smith said the winning alliance from the July 12 and 13 tournament was OP Robotics of Ontario, Canada; Jack in the Bot of Mill Creek, Washington; S.P.A.M.of Stuart, Fla.; and The Highlanders of Fort Collins, Colo.

The invitational also conducts a backpack drive and a silent auction to benefit a local nonprofit. Smith reports that 60 backpacks were donated for elementary students in need, and $6,300 was raised through the auction for Riley Adolescent Mental and Behavioral Health.

The tournament also awarded three $1,000 scholarships and sold out of grilled corn.