Robotics team 4506 placed second overall at a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics tournament in Annapolis on Jan. 14. On Jan. 21, team 4621 also placed second at Harford County’s qualifying tournament. Both teams will be participating in the state championship on Feb. 25 at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
According to the FTC website, “FIRST is a not-for-profit organization devoted to helping young people discover and develop a passion for science, engineering, technology, and math.” For more information on the FTC, click here.
According to robotics team moderator Rebecca Jansing-Kaestner, the teams “started building towards the end of September.” Along with building a robot, the teams are required to keep an Engineering Notebook, which documents their building and team experience.
According to senior robotics team member Ana Beain, “Competitions are pretty intense. They’re an entire Saturday. Besides doing the matches themselves, you have to present in front of a judge what your robot can do.”
During the matches, each team is paired with another, forming an alliance. The matches are conducted as two-on-two games. The games are played on a 12 ft by 12 ft mat, covered in foam.
The game challenge is different every year, with this year’s theme being “Bowled Over!” According to the FTC website, the alliances compete to guide racquetballs into colored scoring goals. There are also two bowling balls on the field used for scoring points.
In each match, there is an autonomous period for the robots, where they cannot be controlled by the teams. There is also an operator-controlled period lasting for two minutes.
The teams built different robots in preparation for different tasks. Team 4506, composed of junior Andy Beain and sophomores Jon Kolson and Austin Schap, also won the motivate award.
According to the FTC website, this award “celebrates the team that exemplifies the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through team spirit and enthusiasm.”
Team 4621 is composed solely of seniors, including Ana Beain, Amanda Weerasooriya, Jenny Yang, AJ Stewart, Matt Zoltoski, and Shawn Pessagno.
According to the FIRST website, “teams of up to 10 students are responsible for designing, building, and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams.”
Weerasooriya likes the team aspect of the competition. “I like working with team members to create a functional robot to complete the tasks required,” Weerasooriya said.
Weerasooriya also volunteered at the FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics competition hosted at John Carroll on Dec. 17. For news on the FLL competition, click here.
According to Schap, “Design is my favorite because I get to tinker around, see what works best, and change it for the better if it is inefficient.”
Sometimes design is difficult, though. “The worst thing is when you have a good idea, and something unexpected happens, and it doesn’t work, and you have to work around it. You get a great feeling though, when the problem is solved,” Schap said.
Weerasooriya echoes these sentiments. “It’s difficult creating and seeing if it works or not. If it fails, it is hard not to get down,” Weerasooriya said.
Team 4621 member Ana explains the preparation process. “Actually working on the robot is the hardest part of being on the team. We’re pretty good about coming up with ideas, but it is hard to motivate our whole team to actually build the robot,” Ana said.
“The most enjoyable thing about being on the team is seeing the progress we’ve made throughout the year. We started out with basically four wheels and a chassis and finished with a good robot,” Ana said.
According to Weerasooriya, the team members are “apprehensive” about the upcoming state championship. “Our two drivers will be on a ski trip, and our leader Ana Beain will be at a piano recital,” Weerasooriya said.
Ana is also unsure as to the team’s future success. “We’re excited to be in states, but not optimistic,” she said.
If the team wins at the state tournament, then they will move on to the world tournament.
Adam Kuester is a News Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.