On March 7 and 8, Aragon’s First Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team competed at the FTC regional competition in San Jose. Their robot competed against other teams vying to move on to the world competition. The judging and inspection stage of the event took place on the 7th, while tournament matches commenced on the 8th. The FTC robotics team came in second place in the Silicon Division, which resulted in a fourth-place finish overall.
Robotics has been a part of the Aragon community for twenty years. Currently, Aragon has two robotics teams, the First Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team and First Robotics Competition (FRC) robotics team. The major difference between the two teams is the number of people and the size of the robot.
Each robotics team builds a robot to perform a game at competitions during their season. This year, FTC’s game involved stacking large building blocks.
“This year’s game is called Skystone and the main game elements are a lot like a LEGO, a yellow kind of stone looking objects. And we’re supposed to stack these stones as high as we can,” said junior and FTC Team Captain Aaron Wong.
The faster the robot performed the task, the more points the team scored.
In order to design and build a robot to play the game, the 15 members of the FTC robotics team began work on the robot after the big game reveal in September.
“Since the season started in September, we did prototyping soon afterwards and we started actually manufacturing the bot in late September, early November,” said junior Nick Ping, head of the Computer-aided design team.
Each member of the multigrade FTC robotics team had a specialized role in the process of assembling and preparing the robot and team.
At the competitions, each member of the team was given a vital role.
“We have a Drive Team [that] is practicing or getting ready [to maneuver the robot during the game]. We [also] have the Pit Crew who are the people who [repair] the [robot in between matches],” Wong said. “Some people are scouting [other teams], which is interviewing [or] talking to other teams to figure out who we want to [make an alliance]with during qualification. We also have people taking pictures or just spectating.”
A large part of the competition was scouting good teams to align with during elimination rounds.
Freshman Zachary Peachin said, “It was a lot of running around finding out how good the teams were so we could figure out how to beat them. It was really tense and fun because we did really well.” Beyond the people who built the robot, a business team works on the funding for the FTC robotics team.
“Members of the team usually donate about 200 [dollars] a piece, ” said junior programmer Kevin Ren.
The FTC team also reaches out to businesses in the technology field like Bristol Myers Squibb and Intuitive Surgical for grants.
Junior and business captain Shelby Cherkas said, “We generally get a lot of our money through donations and grants. This year we’ve made $11,000 in grants.”
Beyond funding, designing and building of the robot, the team spirit factors into the success of the FTC robotics team. The FTC robotics team did not qualify for the regional competition based solely upon the performance of their robot. The team qualified partly because of their spirit.
“I made sure everyone [was] wearing red and black and capes and bandanas and having a good time,” Cherkas said.
At the regional competition, the FTC team competed against 52 teams finishing with a strong second place in the Silicon Division. The team had a 4-1 record in regionals qualifying matches, and played in the third seed alliance for division finals. However, the team lost 1-2 to the opposing alliance, HyperCube Robotics and Negative Resistance, in division finals.
The team was pleased with their finish, as it had been their strongest performance yet.
“We performed great!” Cherkas said.“Our robot performed the best it has all season. Our drivers did an incredible job. Our spirit was really high all day. It was really fun with all the people and we’re a really close team.”
“We have a lot of current juniors, so a lot of experience is staying within the team, so we’re hoping for a great season next year,” Cherkas said.
The team will now turn its focus to outreach events and connecting with the community hoping to build on their victories from this season.
