Robots advance
Towards the end of spring term, both Wilsobotics and Wilsonic Boom travelled to Langley Park School for Boys for the FTC South-East Regional competition. This competition would be a test of our work over the past academic year and would also be an opportunity to progress to the National competition in London. This season's game had teams shoot coloured balls (called "artefacts") into a scoring tray, where correct sequences of 3 balls would score extra points, making gameplay very tactical, especially as this had to be coordinated with a team member playing alongside us in every match.
Initially, the matches were tough, as the flaws in our robots were fully exposed on the playing field. Time between matches was overwhelmingly spent on tinkering with the robot or solving tedious programming issues - Wilsobotics had an extremely dangerous problem of the robot randomly disconnecting from the controller! However, as the day progressed, our confidence grew as our performance increasingly bettered and both teams climbed up the leaderboard. Wilsobotics managed to make it through to the Play-off matches, and selected Wilsonic Boom as their partner in this final stage. The Wilson's teams pushed themselves against very strong opponents to eventually make it to the final match of the day. Sadly, we were bested some very skilled teams with impressive robots, stopping us from becoming champions of the South-East. Our efforts were not in vain, fortunately, as our position as Finalists allowed us to be submitted to the National competition in April. Additionally, Wilsobotics gained the Think Award for their robot's design and engineering, while Wilsonic Boom got the Reach Award for their exceptional outreach.
A big thanks is owed to Langley Park School for hosting this event, as well as all of the FTC staff that make this competition possible. Congratulations to all teams who attended for their hard work and resilience, especially to Syntax Terror and Overload Robotics for their win. Huge thanks to our sponsors for allowing us to reach this point in the season by providing parts, funds, and CAD support. Keep an eye on our Instagram accounts for more updates as we try to perfect our robots for the Nationals, approaching very soon!
Article written by Adam (Year 11)
