Robotics club competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Qualifiers on Jan. 19 and Feb. 1 and advanced to the FIRST Championship event. The last time the club qualified for Regionals was four years ago. Advised by technology teacher Errol Dusman, students competed in the Qualifiers under two teams: team #5283 LAIMO (Lynbrook Artificially Intelligent Owls) and team #27485 Noctua Mechanica.
The first Qualifier took place at Sewanhaka High School where LAIMO placed eighth and Noctua Mechanica placed sixteenth. The second Qualifier was held at Locust Valley High School with LAIMO placing sixth and Noctua Mechanica placing ninth. In addition to these placements, LAIMO earned third place for Alliance Captain, and Noctua Mechanica earned second place for the Inspire Award, ultimately placing them with the six advancing teams for Regionals.
Preparation for Qualifiers began at the start of the school year. Senior John-Paul D’Agostino, president of the club and team captain of Noctua Mechanica, explained, “The seasonal challenge is revealed in late August to early September. We plan on having the drivetrain ready by October for Night of the Pumpkins. At the same time, we focus on analysing the game and developing a strategy. Our goal is to have an intake and scoring mechanism developed by the winter break. This gives us time to program the 30-second autonomous test over the winter break.” All this preparation means for long hours spent after school in the technology room. “We plan five to six-hour meetings at school and also spend time working on the robot at home. Usually, we only have six hours of meetings a week,” he added.
In addition to the work put in for competitions, D’Agostino plays an active role in spreading awareness about the club: “I create lesson plans to get new students interested in robotics. I also plan outreach events, such as our STEM seminar in October, so more students can learn about careers in robotics, STEM, the FIRST Tech Challenge, and our robotics club.”
Apart from assembling and programming a robot creation, teams must submit their notebook, a 15-page document that details their team’s design process. After the first Qualifier, students received the opportunity to use the given feedback to refine any flaws in their work. Dusman explained, “Our major criticisms were our notebook and our game strategy. Both of these issues were our foremost concern between qualifiers, and I am happy to say that each team worked hard and ironed out the issues into a strong advantage.” Noctua Mechanica earned the Inspire Award for their notebook, which means they were a strong contender for all other awards during the competition.
Sophomore Evan Cao is the team captain of LAIMO and head engineer. He contributed to his team by helping to build and test the robot. When asked about how robots are assessed, he responded, “The robots are assessed on their ability to complete certain tasks; this year it was picking and placing blocks.” Apart from the pressure of competitions, Cao expressed, “Robotics allows me to pursue my hobbies and passions during school hours; it helps as being an engineer gives me an idea of how mechanical engineering would be.”
Now that the club has solidified its spot at Regionals, ample time will be dedicated towards improving the design. “Our next steps are to iron out the final kinks in the design of both robots and work on our game sense. We certainly have much we can work on to improve the designs and earn more points both in the mid-game and the end-game,” Dusman outlined. D’Agostino added that modifications to their design and playstyle will play a key role in scoring significantly more points.
Club members reflected on their experiences at the competition: “I honestly had a lot of fun practicing for the competition and actually competing in it. Although stressful at times, it was really enjoyable for me to compete against other teams and figure out strategies with my own,” sophomore Alexandra Brooks explained. Sophomore Shannon Sanchez also added, “While judging was a bit of a challenge, we’ve since improved from last time and it was very insightful to see our progress. It was truly rewarding to watch all of our hard work during our meetings finally pay off when we qualified for regionals.” Robotics club is looking forward to the Championship event on March 16.
