By student authors on Team Technoramic, Team Rampunzel, and Team Rampage
Team Technoramic
Technoramic (5190) is the oldest team at the school, with a total of nine years participating in the FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge). Over that time, our team competed at Super Regionals in 2018 and the World Championship in 2017 and 2018. However, many of the members leading this championship run have graduated, leading to a rebuilding stage for our team.
The atypical year we’ve had has redoubled our focus on this rebuilding. Due to the restrictions in the fall, we were unable to access our lab for some time. As a result, we spent a significant amount of time working remotely, undergoing and familiarizing our members with the ideation and planning process. Due to the restrictions surrounding our access–our shortened amount of time, fewer members physically present, and limited days of access-–we had to execute the building process more quickly and efficiently to achieve a well-functioning robot in time for competitions.
While these limitations did present a challenge, they led to significant development in our team’s communication and the capabilities of our members. As a result of our work, we earned the 2nd place Design award and were ranked 14th overall in our qualifying meets. The award was not enough to take us to the next round of competition; however, we’ve had victory in the growth of our team alone.
Moving forward, our senior members will work to pass the torch once again to new management. We plan to continue teaching our younger members to be adequately prepared for a strong season next year. In addition, we will resume outreach and sponsorship efforts, the doors to which were generally closed in the early stages of the pandemic. Like always, we will continue to foster connections and promote robotics within our communities—from our team to our school, to our city, and beyond.
Team Rampunzel
This year was Rampunzel’s sixth season as a team, and we overcame some challenges with being part remote and part in-person. Since many members couldn’t have in-person responsibilities, the virtual students worked on documenting the practice process as a helpful resource. We never had time for this before! What highlighted this accomplishment was earning the Think Award at the MO FTC NE League Tournament on February 28, since the engineering content in our portfolio documented the entire design process.
The pandemic also caused a shortage of parts, so we had to search for alternative parts and even find specifications of gears so that the parts could be 3D printed for our use. Many of the younger underclassmen on the team started learning more about driving and building the robot to help improve the team in the future. Our team members connected with the community by inviting one of the Middle School FIRST Lego League robotics teams to hear about our experiences and receive guidance. Overall, this was a very successful year for Rampunzel, and we are looking forward to the next (hopefully in-person) season!
Team Rampage
Among the list of endless school activities and clubs influenced by the pandemic, Robotics was hit especially hard. At the start of the school year, many students remained home, and working in-person in the robotics lab was not an option. As one can imagine, it is quite a struggle to design and create a robot without the tools or facilities to build it physically; however, Rampage did just that. The team placed a particular emphasis on Computer-Aided Design (CAD). Coach Menghini had already introduced a few members with CAD experience, Lucas McCarty ’21, Liam Weber ’21, and Spencer McNeely ’21, to OnShape (a collaborative CAD program) the preceding summer. Between the combined experience of these members and Mr. Menghini’s mentorship, other team members quickly gained fluency in CAD. They were able to digitally create robot concepts, even to the extent of animating functionality to test movement without assembling a single physical part. In late October/mid-November, the team was given clearance to meet in person and quickly began prototyping and building their CAD designs. Within weeks, an early version of the robot was prepared; however, it had its challenges. Many components ordered were delayed, which put the team behind schedule. Despite this, week after week, with countless hours poured into the robot, Rampage’s scores grew.
Finally, Rampage had its league qualifier to determine which teams from the region would advance to State. It was at this event where Rampage’s efforts paid off. Not only did the team take second place in the robot competition, but it also got the second place Inspire Award, the highest award obtainable in First Tech Challenge. Both achievements qualified the team for the State championship, which was, due to the cancellation of the World Championships, the highest level of competition that the team could advance to this year. While preparations for qualifying placed a lot of pressure on the mechanical side of the robotics team, preparations for State put enormous stress on the programming side. With a combination of many hours of extreme effort, the final product was versatile robot programming taking advantage of computer vision and a subset of drive methods created by the team called AccuDrive, which made for solid code for the rest of the season.
The State Championship took place in the spring. The team was recognized for its achievements by winning the Promote Award for its outreach video and the second place Think Award for its outstanding engineering documentation. We are very proud of Rampage’s performance this year despite all the challenges it faced. We can’t wait to see what the team accomplishes next year. Go Rams!
Editor’s Note: Our Lower and Middle School seasons took place earlier in the year and, as a result, did not have the traditional competition or in-person practices. A recap of those efforts can be found here. We hope that we will be back to hosting our regular qualifier next year and have and more news to report in December!