Davis Robotics

Man, what a trip!

So some of you may know that Tech High participates in the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international competition among high schools with a focus on Robotics. The season begins with the kick-off, where FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) tells us what the game is for the season. We then have 6 weeks to design, build, program and test a robot before shipping it to the various regional competitions. Traditionally, we compete in the Silicon Valley Regional, in San Jose. This year we decided to add the Sacramento Regional in Davis to our schedule. It was amazing. Every year is amazing, but this year was the best we've had so far!!

The object of the game is to pick up the rings and place them on the arms of the centrally located scoring structure. Each ring is 2 points, and a row of n rings is worth 2^n points. Bonus points can be earned for lifting up alliance members 4 or 12 inches off the ground. Our robot, Gloria, is designed as an offensive defense robot, meant to keep other robots from scoring. She also has a ramp almost 10 feet long, which will lift a robot 12" off the ground.

Here's Gloria in the heat of battle. 39 teams were competing at Davis. We finished 8th, which means we got to select 2 alliance members to join us in the finals! We've made it to the finals before, but never as an alliance captain- only as a team chosen by another. We chose teams 114 and 2159 as partners. We were eliminated in the quarterfinals.

Here's team 114 driving their robot up our ramp, for a 30 point bonus.

We had a really solid design this year. In three competitions, we never had any major failures or issues. We were also one of the strongest robots out there. We were able to push most of the other robots around, and we were actually able to move the entire goal structure, which weighs about 400 lbs!

Here's us putting the hurt on Team 1960. During the course of the competition, we managed to break the scoring arms of two different robots! 1960 was one of them, the other was team 116 (I think). The Davis competition created a reputation for us as a bruiser bot, which we carried with us to Atlanta. 3 more arms were broken there!

The definite highlight of the trip was winning the Engineering Inspiration Award, the second highest award given at the regional level. Winning this award means we were invited to the championships in Atlanta! We wouldn't have made it if not for one of our sponsors, MV Transportation. They challenged us- if we qualify for Nationals, they'd give us $10,000 for travel costs. Well MV, we did it!

I'm exhausted, but so happy! For the 7 years I've been running the team, we've never had much success. This year, because we had several amazing parent mentors, and a number of companies agreed to sponsor us, we were actually able to build a much more robust robot, which is one of the main reasons for our improved performance.

Thank you MV Transportation, Tellabs, Transit Maintenance Consultants, Unicorn Properties, Goebel Paving and RHL Design Group!! We couldn't have done it without you!