When Lyla Boychuk first heard about the 2026 Calgary Stampede Robot Rodeo’s Agtech challenge, she thought she might be building tractors. Instead, the young roboticist found herself duking it out, gladiator-style, on one of Western Canada’s biggest stages.
“We want [youth] to know that beyond the flashy stuff out there, there’s also a very important role for agriculture.”
Justin Zhou
Boychuk is a longtime member of Western Mechatronics, a Calgary-based non-profit robotics organization offering free classes and workshops for Canadian youth. While she’s been building robots with Western Mechatronics for the better part of three years, 2026 marks her first foray into the Robot Rodeo.
“I wanted to find a new challenge,” Boychuk, who is going into Grade 10 next year in Calgary, said of her decision to participate in this year’s event.
The Robot Rodeo is a joint initiative between the Calgary Stampede’s Youth Initiatives Committee (CSYIC) and Western Mechatronics. Now in its third year, the competition brings teams of junior high and high school students together to build miniature robots and then compete against each other in a challenge event focused on how robotics and engineering can intersect with agriculture, farming, and food production. Last year’s challenge had teams building crop harvesters, while this year’s challenge, dubbed “Bale Buster,” saw the teams given two days to build a robot from scratch, and then use it to harvest and deliver miniature “haybales.”
Boychuk’s team, called Triple T, was one of several competing at Calgary’s BMO Centre for the robot rodeo’s $10,000 prize pool. Teams were judged according to their performance in the challenge itself—which plays out like an episode of BattleBots with buzzsaws replaced for haybalers—as well as the engineering, design, and functionality of their robots, and innovation in problem-solving.
“I’ve been doing the same kind of competition [for a long time],” Boychuk said. “So, I thought ‘two days—this will be fun.’”
The Robot Rodeo is an effort by CSYIC to get more STEM students interested in pursuing a career in Agtech. For Mechatronics robotics subleader Justin Zhou, who has helped organize the event with CSYIC, Agtech offers a viable career path that many in engineering might not be immediately aware of or interested in.
“When most people think of robotics, they think of giant mech suits, Iron Man, BattleBots: stuff that’s kind of flashy and is sort of reaching towards science fiction. Not a lot of people focus on the industry applications of robotics, whether that be assembly, warehouse management, or agriculture,” Zhou said.
Zhou said the goal of the event is to inspire youth to look toward those industries as potential employers, while also showcasing the diversity of engineering that’s applicable to them.
“We want [youth] to know that beyond the flashy stuff out there, there’s also a very important role for agriculture,” Zhou said. “Estimates say by 2050, we’re going to have 10 billion mouths to feed, but there’s only so much land. We’re not going to magically have more land, so we need the technology to evolve … and we need those future roboticists and engineers to help us feed that many mouths.”
The program seems to have achieved its goals, at least for Boychuk, who said participating in the Robot Rodeo changed her perspective on what engineering in agriculture might actually look like.
“I thought ‘Oh, I’m going to be making tractors or something,’” Boychuk said. “But the more I thought about it, there’s actually so many different components of agriculture that have been revolutionized by technology. There’s irrigation, biomedical engineering … all these different things that I didn’t realize were possible until now, and I was like ‘oh, this is actually a feasible opportunity for my future.’”
Agriculture has been a cornerstone of the more than 100-year-old Calgary Stampede. In recent decades, the Stampede has evolved into much more than just rodeo and ag-showcase, with a heightened corporate presence and a who’s who list of government officials and industry leaders. The Robot Rodeo is one part of a growing presence from the tech community at Stampede, with several tech and startup-oriented events being held throughout the city to coincide with the event this year.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
All images courtesy Jesse Cole for BetaKit.