Freshman robotics team competes on campus

By Juan Villanueva |

On Saturday, the robotics team played competition against 33 other teams.

The team was made up of seven freshman students including five boys and two girls.

This is the sixth year of the robotics team doing this competition, except students in the team were freshmen, and most of team participated in robotics during middle school.

“It’s always fun hanging out, building robots, seeing other robots and also meeting other teams,” Team Leader Sarah Poupart said.

The game (Cascade Effect) was played on a 3.66m x 3.66m (12’x12′) square field with 1 inch walls and soft foam mat used as the playing surface.

First, two randomly selected teams were paired up together as an allience to play a match against another alliance.

Scoring Elements were 160 white plastic balls which includes 40 large and 120 small balls. In the beginning of the match, each team were given 2 balls, one large and one small to be preloaded onto their robot.

The game then goes through a 30-second Autonomous Period followed by a Driver-Controlled Period.

During the Autonomous period, robots are awarded for achieving certain tasks. On the other hand, during the two minute Driver-Controlled Period, Robots are tasked to collect balls and had to place the balls in rolling goals.

The final 30 seconds of the Driver-Controlled Period is referred to the end game in which robots are allowed to score balls into both the center and rolling goal.

Bonus points were also awarded for every robot and rolling goal that did not touch the ground when a match ended.

Overall, the team placed 20th out of the total 34 teams. This means that the team did not advance.

“They did pretty well for a freshman rookie team,” ETA Teacher Brian Griffith said.