Robotics – FIRST World Championships – Houston, Texas

Our Pymble Robotics team, 6510 Pymble Pride competed in the FIRST Worlds Championship (Worlds) against 600 teams from around the world in Houston Texas from Wednesday 19 April to Saturday 22 April. This event is the most technical and competitive Robotics competition in the world. The Worlds experience allows Pymble students to work and learn from teams mentored by NASA, tech giants in Silicon Valley and other experts in industry from around the world. The team were immensely competitive and came away with many lessons and inspiration for the future. The team took themselves and their robot to the limit.

The Worlds has been our greatest season, built on the experience of teams from the years before and with visions of teams for the future. Pymble Pride were the lead team in an international regional before one small event took us off course. We won two Excellence in Engineering Awards across the globe. In the end, we ranked 51st at the World Championships, a solid result in what was a very competitive field in 2023.

Our drivers and pit crew are the visible stars, however, it takes the team of 40 students to allow us to perform at the best level possible. The team is built on the spirit of hard working, committed students who seemingly do ‘small things’, laying important foundations for the team.

Scouting is an important part of the process. Our Pymble team spend hours collecting data from matches, collecting scores and observations that allow our drivers and team to make strategy decisions based off this data without question. Any small scouting error could throw off the entire team, yet our Pymble students push through the fine detail of scouting allowing our team to shine.

Thank you to our mentor Oscar Chevalier, Manni Lin (Year 12) and Amelie Muir (Year 11) for developing an app that allowed our team to collect match data and turn this into data defined strategy which we could share with teams that play with us. Thank you also to every Pymble Robotics student who spent time at a laptop screen focussing on every point scored, every robot movement to create what was, without doubt, one of the best systems we have ever seen.

Thank you to: Emma Du (Year 10), Charlotte Ford (Year 10). Aysel Gupta (Year 10), Samantha He (Year 10), Jasmine LI (Year 10), Annie Luo (Year 10), Ollisha Muthukuda (Year 10), Erika Nakamaru (Year 10), Aria Patel (Year 10), Teresa Sun (Year 10), Lisa Wang (Year 10) and Sophie Wang (Year 10) among others for their commitment.

Thank you also to our media team who documented our progress and amazing team and culture via Instagram, allowing thousands of teams to recognise and follow Pymble’s journey to, and at, Worlds, showcasing our amazing team. Thank you to: Allison Wang (Year 10), Isabella Nguyen (Year 10), Rachel Chan (Year 10) and others for documenting this so well.

Our team took their robot as far as it could go in competition, constantly making improvements. The wonderful team RoboSpartan hosted us every evening and on some days at their high-tech facility in Katy, Texas. This allowed us to make improvements, test code and practice driving. Thank you to our lead coders: Mulan Xu (Year 11) and Sophia Chen (Year 10) for coding a camera to automatically aim at a target during driver operation and doing so while on tour. This hard work gave our robot the best chance to perform and set up knowledge for future coders.

During competition, matches were won and lost. Our Pymble Robotics team displayed amazing feats of manoeuvring and scoring. We balanced a 45kg robot with three other similarly weighted robots on a balance board. Although we toppled over once, Pymble resilience and determination kicked in. Our final result may not have shined statistically, but the Pymble approach, recognition and attitude did.

Each member of our team was asked to assist with dismantling the robot to transport it back to Sydney. Every Pymble student, no matter what their role, took responsibility and charge for taking this complex machine apart, without direct mentor and coach instructions, showing impressive technical skills.

We left Worlds with respect, recognition and international interest. Pymble Pride is a team made up of a culture where passionate, committed students lead the way; demonstrating Pymble’s core values throughout. What an amazing platform from which to keep on growing.

Please thank and congratulate all of our Pymble students for representing future engineers from Australia on the Worlds stage and for all their hard work and commitment:

Samantha He (Year 10)

Jessica Wang (Year 10)

Sophia Chen (Year 10)

Mulan Xu (Year 11)

Sabrina Rolinek (Year 11)

Manni Lin (Year 12)

Rachel Moon (Year 10)

Ang-ya Koo (Year 10)

Emma Du (Year 10)

Teresa Sun (Year 10)

Isabella Nguyen (Year 10)

Charlotte Ford (Year 10)