On Saturday, Dec. 7, three robotics teams composed of Redwood students competed at the second NorCal-FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) Pen League Meet of the year against students from other schools around the Bay Area. During the tournament, each team competed in five matches with the objective of building a robot that could collect the most specimens and samples in the given period of time.
Each round is two and a half minutes long and consists of a 30-second autonomous and two-minute human-driven period. To score points, the robot must bring samples to their designated zone or put them in an elevated basket: four points for a level one basket and eight points for a higher level two basket. Robots can also bring samples to an observation zone, where a team member will convert them into specimens, which the robots can hang on a center structure for six or 10 points, depending on how high the specimen is hung.
Redwood’s robotics team experienced success and failure during the meet. The freshmen and sophomore team, nicknamed “Mech Cadets,” finished 12th of 16 teams. Redwood’s all-girls team, “Artemis Robotics,” started strong, scoring a tournament-high of 161 points in their first match with a very successful autonomous code that collected three samples alone.
Making the robots autonomous is so difficult because of how precise it needs to be. While some teams used sensors to guide their robot through autonomous movement, Redwood’s robotics teams decided to put their attention elsewhere. Instead, they told the robot the measurements needed to navigate scoring points by coding its movement for the first 30 seconds of the match. Sophomore Lillian Merril explained how her team, Artemis Robotics, started experiencing technical difficulties during the second half of the tournament.
“The voltage from our battery changed, and that [messed] up the tuning that we had with our autonomous code. So, it was misaligned and we didn’t score autonomously,” Merril said.
Despite the setback, Artemis Robotics was able to finish sixth overall.
Each team, using a designated amount of funding, builds its robot starting from a basic structure that it purchases. The team then brainstorms concepts of a robot that would work best in the annually changed scenario. From there, the team may construct their robots however they want, using guidelines set by the competition hosts.
The upper-class robotics team, “Maringineers,” went into the second half of the tournament in sixth place after a tie. After winning their fourth match, they made their way to third place, which they were able to secure after winning their fifth match in a blowout, 101 to 26.
Redwood Robotics Advisor Nicholas Sullivan-Friedman, known by students as Mr. SF, expressed his pride in the three teams’ performance.
“Overall our teams did very well despite having some technical and mechanical challenges throughout the meet, which the teams were able to quickly solve and then get their robots back into working condition,” Sullivan-Friedman said.
