First Tech Challenge Regional Competition

Last Friday, the Robotics Club attended the First Tech Challenge South-East Competition at the RAF Museum in Hendon. The team have been working on building a robot for competition since January. They had to consider which drivetrain to build, how to grab various objects including ducks, bricks and balls and place these into different parts of the game area. We tried various designs during our afterschool sessions and finally decided on an intake mechanism and a lift. The team had to code the various motors to operate with a gamepad and practice driving the robot. 

At the competition, we played in five matches, whilst partnered up with other teams in alliances. Points scored for each alliance in the games were added to the overall score. We had time to practise before our matches and made a few adjustments to our design to help gain extra points in the game. It is amazing what you can do with a few straws. 

We were doing well and in the running for the semi-finals, when disaster struck. We were just about to compete and the battery on our robot died and we could not compete. This meant that we dropped down the leader board and missed out on a place in the semi-finals. Everyone on the team had a great day and were excellent representatives for the school. They made some new friends and conducted themselves with a high level of maturity especially as they were competing with and against teams of older students, 
some from international schools.

Thanks to Harry as our chief programming for the coding. Thanks to Anusan for the drivetrain build with some help from Asagi. Thanks to Tisha, who created an excellent grabber and Alex and Luca for building the intake mechanism, assisted by Ekrem. Thanks to Esat for writing our Engineering Diary and Kipp for trialling the robot and being our chief alliance builder on the day.