The Aragon Robotics Team (ART) attended the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) at the UC Davis Activities and Recreation Center Pavilion from March 14 to 15. The team ranked 35 out of 54 total junior teams.
Each team was allowed to build one robot for the competition. The challenge, called “Aerial Assist,” involved three teams working together against three other teams. Co-captain and senior Priyam Das says, “You have this huge yoga ball, two feet in diameter, and you’re supposed to try and pass the ball between robots and score it into a goal at the end of the field.”
To score, a team member tosses a ball to one robot, which would pass it on to another robot. The second robot then shoots the ball over a truss, where a waiting robot proceeds to shoot the ball into a goal.
When an alliance wins, each team on that alliance receives one point.
The first stage of the competition was a qualification round during which each team played 12 matches. The top eight teams with the most wins became alliance captains and selected other teams to be part of their alliances.
At the end of the qualifying round, Aragon managed a 5-7 record and was not able to advance to the next round.
This year, the team faced many obstacles, including playing matches without a full alliance. Das says, “It was interesting because even though it’s three versus three, we had a lot of matches where we were down two versus three. It was because either our alliance member’s robot wasn’t ready or in functioning in condition. That was an interesting aspect. That usually doesn’t happen.”
Having fewer robots on the team made it difficult to defend and attack successfully.
However, difficulties existed for the team even before arriving at Davis. All teams were informed of the challenge six weeks before the competition. According to Das, designing and making the robot in that short window of time required extreme dedication and focus from ART members.
The six weeks started in early January and ended mid-February. During that time, the team worked after school until 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and met on a few Saturday for about seven hours each. Even on no-school days, like Martin Luther King Jr. Day, they met to utilize as much of the six weeks as possible.
During this time, the team needed to figure out how to shoot the ball. Das says, “While designing the robot, a lot of time went into how are we going to be able to shoot the ball into the goal … We ended up going with an air-powered pneumatic piston … It’s basically a piston with a plate on the end. You compress air into the piston and release all of it. Then the piston goes out and punches the ball out.”
At the competition, the team realized that this shooting method required forward momentum from the robot to work best. This meant that whenever the team wanted to shoot, it needed the robot to drive forward at the same time, both requiring careful coordination and room to maneuver around other defending robots.
Krzesniak says there are actually two drivers: one that drives the robot, and an operator, who operates the arm and shooter. He says, “Between driver and operator with our design there had to be a lot of coordination and a lot of practice … It’s all about teamwork.”
Although the team did not make it to the next round, Das was very happy with the dedication demonstrated by ART members. She says, “Out of 47 team members we had 40 come to the competition, so we had a very good turn out.”
Based on the experience at this competition, the team now has a better idea how to design the shooter for their robot and is looking forward to the next challenge.
