Pymble Robotics qualifies for world championships
Teamwork makes the machine work. This is the motto for 2023’s FIRST Robotics Competition team. Last weekend at the Southern Cross Regional at the WIN arena in Wollongong, our girls competed against teams from across Australia and two from Asia to try to qualify for World Championships in Houston Texas.
Pymble Pride won the event, with their Alliance Captain Barker Redbacks and second choice Robo Rebels from Narooma, NSW. Additionally, they won the Engineering Inspiration award for advancing respect and appreciation for Engineering within and outside a school community.
As a result, the team is off to Houston, Texas to compete against the best in the World.
The first Robotics Competition is a high-stress, high-impact and highly competitive competition, levelled for senior students with mentor assistance with university and industry knowledge and training.
Our girls have willingly put hundreds of hours into the design, manufacturing, testing and improvement of the robot since early January this year. This is the girls’ program. The girls, guided by our mentors, project manage, order parts, devise strategy and designs, manufacture cut parts, code and drive the robot. The robot that hits the field represents the team on many levels.
On arrival at practice on Friday, our robot turned heads. It’s arm and intake design impressing with its smooth movements, accuracy and control. This was coupled with a drivetrain that can move in any direction along the floor, in a fashion not dissimilar to a shopping cart, but with complete control.
Our driver and operator, Sabrina Rolinek (Year 11) and Sophia Chen (Year 10) were calm under pressure making some magnificent attacking moves at high speed, finding gaps and placing items in position under immense pressure.
By the end of the qualification rounds, we were second in the ranking behind Barker Redbacks, our most successful ranking at a regional qualification.
During the qualification rounds, the team divided up into many essential roles. Scouters collected data on each robot after every match, busily analysing data to create strategies for future matches. Thank you to Manni Lin (Year 12) for leading this charge and all the girls who entered live data into our system created by our co-captain Amelie Muir (Year 11) for us to make informed choices.
Not all was smooth sailing. On Saturday, our robot communication system was running with errors on the competition field in the first official match of the day. When testing before a match or after, all systems were functional. It was a difficult scenario to pin down a problem.
With thanks to our mentor’s guidance, our girls remained calm and systematically checked coding, wiring and motors to eradicate all possible problems.
When the robot hit the field for the next match. It was fully functioning.
A special mention to our coding team led by Amelie Muir (Year 11), Sophia Chen (Year 10), Mulan Xu (Year 11) and Jasmine Li (Year 10), among others who created a reliable autonomous code that had us highest in the autonomous rankings. Additionally, their code for driver control allowed our drivers to pull off the amazing moves they did. Coders are often the unsung heroes, working busily, sometimes late, and under the most pressure towards the end of the build season. However, without them, our machine would certainly not work. Thank you girls.
During playoffs, our Alliance nudged the World Record, but did not quite surpass it. However, it was clear we were the favourites and very high scoring alliance. Despite another scare, when a motor blew, sending a flash which thankfully some of our team saw in the crowd, we hit all our marks and made it to the Finals, which is decided by a best of three round.
The first finals match was one-sided, with the highest score of the tournament going to our alliance. The second and possibly deciding final was close run, with the opposition Alliance (7433 Iona Fusion, 6508 Hastings Heroes, 9146 Backburner) putting in a David vs Golliath effort, missing out on a win by only 6 points.
As a result, the Barker, Pymble and Narooma alliance won the event.
Teamwork does make the machine work. Whether girls in the pits like Rachel Moon (Year 10), Ang-ya Koo (Year 10), Sophia Chang (Year 10) constantly working on the machine or our Media Team led by Allison Wang (Year 10) and Isabella Nguyen (Year 10) recording matches and ambiance for scouting and our promotion, every girl plays an important part. Even with just one girl not working at her best, the machine ceases to work.
This amazing result is down to the efforts, seemingly big or small, of every single girl on the team, whether they were able to make it to Wollongong or not.
Thank you also to the mentors’ tireless efforts and passion.
An additional thanks to the parents, who were able to build a field for the team, allowing us to practice and hone in our robot. Thank you for your tireless efforts. You are part of the team as well.
Congratulations to all teams who competed.
