Upper School Robotics Rocks Chicago League Championship

by Robotheosis Co-Captain Nathan Satterfield ’19

 

This past weekend, Parker’s two Upper School Robotics teams competed at the Chicago League Championship with the goal of qualifying for the Illinois State FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Tournament.

 

The two teams built robotics for a game called Relic Recovery, which is loosely based on the “Indiana Jones” movie genre. The game is played on a 12’ x 12’ square field where four teams compete on two randomly paired alliances in a three-minute game to get the most points. The main object of the game is to score Glyphs (foam blocks) into the Cryptoboxes (vertical shelves), completing rows, columns and Ciphers (patterns with the blocks). Bonus points are awarded for transferring Relics (plastic figures) to the Recovery Zone, retrieving Jewels (colored whiffle balls), parking on the Balancing Stones and navigating to specific parts of the Playing Field. If you would like to see more about the game, you can watch the game video.

 

To start the day, the two teams underwent inspection so tournament organizers could verify that the robot was built within the rules for the game. The teams then presented to judges who would later decide on awards to present to the teams at the end of the day.

 

At the beginning of the day, Parker’s teams, #3507 Robotheosis and #9410 Franks Garage, were ranked 1st and 4th respectively. Rankings were based on each team’s best 10 out of 15 matches they played during the past three months. The teams then played another five matches and ended the qualification rounds in 2nd and 4th.

 

In the elimination matches, Robotheosis was partnered with Latin’s FTC team. Together the alliance went undefeated in the Semi-Finals and Finals matches. Together the teams won each of their matches by 100 to 200 points, earning Robotheosis and Latin the Winning Alliance award and medals.

 

During the awards ceremony, Franks Garage won the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for their unique and creative robot design. In addition to being a member of the Winning Alliance, Robotheosis won the Control Award for their unique and ingenuitive robot programming, and Robotheosis won the Inspire Award, which recognizes a team at the tournament that excels on the field, has a well-designed and exceptional robot, engages their community through outreach activities and has a well-written engineering notebook. The engineering notebook documents each and every thing that happens at meetings, and Robotheosis also has an outreach log that tracks the various community-based events we host.