Robotics team competes in Napa

The three teams that participated in the competition are team 10148, led by junior Jacob Webb, team 4345, led by senior Avichal Goel and team 10150, led by junior Akshay Bodla.

“In the Napa qualifier, [members of] 4345 won the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award, were nominated for the Design Award and were the Third Seed Alliance FirstPick,” said robotics team vice president and senior Chloe Lee. “10148 were nominated as Inspire Award Second Place, won the Think Award, and were also nominated for the Innovate Award. Team 10148 [has] officially qualified for the FTC NorCal Regional Championship.”

This means that team members of 10148 will travel to Sacramento in early spring to participate in the next level of competition.

Senior Meiling Thompson, who currently serves as robotics team’s overall team captain, explained the preparation for the contests. Her responsibilities include keeping track of the three subteams, coordinating finances and directing lead mentor meetings.

“Each team has a budget of around $500, which comes out to about $1,500 total just for parts,” Thompson said. “The parts would be like wheels or anything else the team needs.”

One of the biggest costs the teams face is registration fees for competitions, which can total $2,400 for all three teams.

“Usually what we do is apply for grants from sponsors,” Thompson said. “We just request an amount of money to pay for registration fees and parts, or we request materials from that company.”

The robots that the teams brought to the competition were designed months ago, and have gone through extensive testing during the team meetings that take place twice each week after school.

“The first week is usually brainstorming and simple prototyping, and then the two to three weeks after that are more building,” Thompson said. “By the end of the first two months, we usually have an elementary designed robot, and then the months after that are a lot of testing, refining, maybe adding one new subsystem. But the design of the robot stays pretty much the same.”

Freshman Randy Liu and his team 10148 designed their robot to complete complex tasks during competitions.

“There’s a lot of parts [of the robot],” Liu said. “One part [has] wheels that spin, so when it hits a block, it brings the block inwards, and then in order to release the block the wheels spin the other way and it shoots the block out.”

Competitions are made up of several matches between two robots of different schools, which compete in carrying out tasks to win awards.

“There’s two robots, [one] from each team, with a set of things they each need to do,” said sophomore Andres Zimmermann of team 10150. “We’ve been working on the robots since the beginning of the year. We have to grab cubes [in competition] … We’re working on a new design using flywheels to grab the cube. Additionally, we’re working on an extending claw arm to recover the [cubes].”

In reflection to the competition, Lee said that the team’s biggest challenge was the robot’s consistency.

“During the matches, the chain and the gear in the intake system would occasionally get loose, which makes it difficult for us to pick up the game elements and put it in the cryptobox,” Lee said. “We would need to constantly tighten and adjust certain mechanical components on the robot as the matches [went on].”

However, Lee sees room for improvement.

“There is always room for improvement for all three of our teams,” Lee said. “One of the biggest changes we made for this season was to host summer training sessions for our new members, where we were able to successfully recruit around 30 new members into the team. Then, we distributed the veteran members and the new members equally to ensure that one team will not have a significant advantage over another. Therefore, for the majority of the members, it is their first year in FTC, which means that there are still a lot for them to learn.”