Robotics

Late last term, the Pymble Pride Robotics team visited Tallahassee, Florida, for the FIRST Robotics Competition and their first international regional. Regionals are an opportunity to qualify for the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. Pymble Pride attended the Florida regional to boost the team’s international profile.

Despite a very strong start, the team finished 4th and were awarded the Engineering Excellence award for the design of their robot, Tall-e. Despite finishing 4th, the team had previously qualified for the Houston Championships in the Wollongong regionals, three weeks earlier.

With a skeleton crew of seven students, each team member was going to be busy throughout the event. The team usually comprises of 36 members. Each student was going to be stretched.

The robot, designed by students in early January, was disassembled into four check-in luggage sized pieces, to make the transportation by plane as easy as possible, and rebuilt in the hotel room once arriving in Tallahassee.

With thanks to the Capital City Chaotic Coders, we were able to test our robot in one of the University libraries, to make sure all the systems were working before the competition. After some inevitable hiccups, the robot was fully functional. Well done to our young engineers for designing the robot so successfully.

On the practice day, our rookie drive team, Sophia Chang (Year 10) and Rachel Moon (Year 10) managed to get over 16 matches of practice against top teams, gaining important match experience. By the end of the day, it became clear to other teams we were going to be one of the favourites.

Ang-Ya Koo (Year 10) and Ashley Chow (Year 10) led all work in the pit area, ensuring each member fulfilled their duties and the team coordinated and communicated clearly, making sure the small things were done correctly.

Annie Luo (Year 10), Emma Du (Year 10) and Teresa Sun (Year 10) with the help of Miss Baker, scouted out their opponents. Scouting is an important part of strategy, ensuring match data for every team is gathered so that they can make informed and accurate strategy selection and alliances for every match.

Many teams were in awe of the professionalism and focus of our teams. By the end of the qualification matches on Saturday, we were ranked 1st and looking like the favourites.

Our Pymble team were able to relax and make friends with other team members on Saturday night. They were like superstars, with other students and mentors introducing themselves and complimenting them on their approach!

Final qualification matches were held on Sunday morning before Finals in the afternoon. We were looking like the team to beat. Unfortunately, our momentum was about to take a turn.

During a judging interview while showing our robot, our amazing driver Rachel Moon (Year 10) caught her finger in one of the mechanisms, puncturing her finger in the process. Thankfully, due to general safety procedures and after medical checks, Rachel was left to drive in pain, with a heavily bandaged finger. Rachel and Sophia were now under immense pressure to retain our number one ranking.

Despite digging deep, they lost control of the robot in a split second resulting in the robot toppling over. Unfortunately, we lost our number one ranking. The team showed grit, fought back and regained that number one ranking only to lose it again in the final qualification match in an amazing fightback by other teams.

We entered the Finals as the 2nd alliance. Each finals match was immensely competitive, with small things swaying the results, with many upsets and surprises. Our students showed courage and kept going to the end. Unfortunately, we lost in the Semi-finals, finishing 4th overall against the tournament champions.

Importantly, our teams faced the challenges and gave it their all, learning so much along the way. We also made international friends, namely Taubatexas 7459, a Brazilian team, who laughed and cried with us along the way. Also, special thanks to Wolfbotics 5145 for being so welcoming and accommodating.

The event was a success and the College is immensely proud of the mammoth achievement that has been accomplished on the international stage. Our team may not have won, but they have shown Pymble courage and determination. They left Tallahassee proud of their achievements and heads held high.

Over the Easter holiday period, the team competed against the rest of the world at the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. Information on how the girls went will be shared in the coming weeks.

Thank you to our dedicated and passionate Robotics Co-Ordinator, Asaph Mross Becker, for inspiring the students with his work ethic and care.

Dan Brown

Co-ordinator – Robotics