Goalia, the Robotic Goalie
In early May of 2023, the Banting Robotics team received an incredibly remarkable commission from TSN, the highest earning sports channel in all of Canada. With the special request to create a robotic hockey goaltender, team members immediately went to work. After planning, designing, and adding a base, pneumatics and motors were implemented to quickly deflect shots with a human-controlled device, having multiple hours’ worth of programming to control them accurately. Gradual improvements were made over the given time span of almost two months, honing Goalia’s skills through an extensive amount of testing.
Eventually, in late June, Goalia made its first appearance on live, national television, starring on Free Agent Frenzy against retired NHL player Dave Poulin and Olympic gold medalist Cheryl Pounder. Given their prowess, the ex-NHL players shot much faster than previous testers, making saving hockey pucks much more difficult than before. Therefore, to combat this, Goalia brought out her final defense; her limelight camera. The camera, shining a bright green light, became able to automatically detect the reflective hockey puck being used without any human intervention. This enabled Goalia’s reaction time to greatly increase, moving much faster to successfully block the shots against her and defeat the professional hockey players in the end!
This was all possible with the generosity from our President Amber McLenaghan, donating her goalie helmet, and Boulton Replay Sports gifting hockey gear for Banting Robotics to use. A massive thanks to them!
Heres some additional links if you are curious and want to learn more!
