Lake Stevens High School Robotics team “Arsenic” was victorious at the state championship, winning the Innovate Award. Not only did they secure a spot, but their performance earned them an opportunity to compete at the world competition.
The key to their success? A combination of writing skills, a stellar interview with the judges, and teamwork. The team divides the work among each other. Using Discord to chat, they can figure out every problem together as a team. “The most important thing is communication. We have to make sure we know which team is good at doing what, so if we need to switch, it’s all about communication during and before the matches, so we go up to them and talk about strategy and stuff. And then mainly we try to block off people’s areas to make sure they’re not able to move and score on us,” sophomore Corbin Kingston said.
Arsenic faced a nerve-wracking interview with the judges, where they had the chance to articulate their thoughts, defend their ideas, and demonstrate their passion for their work. Their ability to impress the judges during this critical phase of the competition played a role in their victory. In addition to that, they also had a very complex and interesting line of code which impressed the judges.
“Our polynomial autonomous function, which is what we also applied for Innovate with. It is a custom algorithm that we created and tested ourselves, and what it does is it controls the acceleration and deceleration of the robot when moving a set amount of inches forward or backward during the autonomous period. ,” explained sophomore Colwyn Roberts.
In robotics, teams receive a booklet to build a robot for the competition, but teams can change what they want to the design as needed as long as it stays within the boundaries and doesn’t break any rules. “I think we had redone the robot mostly. It had an intake catapult hanging mechanism, and two pairs of wings, one on the front, one on the back. And so we tried to build a kind of skeleton of the robot to make it as light as possible, lighter, better. And then it also had a wheel so that it could easily get across the barrier,” described sophomore Riley Walrod.
Having a plan before the round begins is crucial. “For matches, we do a strategy that’s partly known as bowling and starvation. So basically we put a bunch of acorns in front of her. We introduce a lot of the match flows into the field at the start and then we score all those, so we get to such a big lead in scoring that in the middle in the middle of the matches,” said sophomore Chris Rapues.
The rules of the game may seem simple, but there is a lot that goes into it. There are 60 tribals total which are acorn-shaped. Matches begin with a fifteen-second autonomous period where robots operate without input from their drivers. During the autonomous period, alliances must keep one robot in their offensive zone and one robot in their opponent’s offensive zone. This alliance tribal always counts towards the same color, regardless of where it is scored. Alliances who score the most points during the autonomous period will earn a bonus of eight points. Alliances may also earn additional autonomous windpointe by completing certain tasks during the autonomous period. Then the drivers take over.
The drivers have a minute and forty-five seconds to score as many tribals as they can, tribals scored on the team’s side are worth two points each but tribals scored in the net are worth five points each. During the driver control period, robots are free to move about the field. However, if an alliance ever finds itself with two robots in the same offensive zone, this is called double zoning. Double zoning tribals that are scored in an alliance as gold are no longer protected from opponent robots. When the round is close to ending the teams have a bar they must elevate the robot with. Each robot’s height off the ground will be measured to determine its elevation tier. elevation points will then be awarded based on each robot tier relative to all other robots. For example, getting to Tier II could be worth as many as twenty points, or as few as five. The elevation tier begins at the floor and ends above the elevation bar.
Robotics is not the easiest sport to play or win, making it to world is a huge accomplishment and I wish 8931R the best of luck as they get ready for the world championship.
