- A Featu r e on th e 20 23 Season .

Avi Agrawal

The Westm inster W iredCats is our school?s robotics team , and it m ay not be what you were expecting There are m any different robotics organizations and events across the country, including som e that you m ay know, like FLL and VEX, that focus on sm all, low tech robots. These com petitions often have constricting param eters and little room for creativity, however, the FIRST Robotics Com petition (FRC) throws m any of the predeterm ined conventions out the window. An organization based on principles of outreach and collaboration, FIRST re-thinks high school robotics by fostering creativity and technological innovation am ong students across the world through m assive robots of our own design. Like m any other robotics com petitions, FIRST holds annual 12 week seasons in which they introduce a brand new gam e for that year and hold com petitions over the last 6 weeks of the season. This year?s gam e, ?Charged Up!? had one of the m ost exciting seasons to date.

The W iredCats have a yearly tradition called kickoff, where the entire team gathers together and watches the yearly gam e announcem ent stream There?s lots of food and fun, but the m om ent the year?s gam e is announced, all play is forgotten In bursts of energy and excitem ent, groups split up into discussion about various aspects of the gam e including rules, penalties, and potential design ideas. This year, the gam e was deceptively sim ple. The gam e consisted of two alliances, or team s, of three random ly chosen robots who com pete against each other. The goal of the gam e was to gather as m any cubes and cones, which are retrieved from the field or a designated zone, and score them on a scoring ?node?. The nodes were organized in different heights and distances from the robot and corresponded to different scores when a robot filled one of these positions Finally, during the last 30 seconds of the gam e, a period called the ?end gam e?, the robots have the ability to balance on the ?charging station?, a wobbly m etal platform to score m ore points for their alliance The alliance with the m ost points by the end of a round wins ranking points, the key decider in robot rankings

This year, our team played in 2 district com petitions in Lawrenceville and M acon as well as in the district cham pionship in Em erson Our very first com petition was in Lawrenceville, and we m anaged to win it all, assisting our alliance partners in the elim ination bracket of the tournam ent and com ing out on top in the finals! I had the am azing opportunity to drive throughout the qualifying and elim ination m atches and was able to m eet m any incredible people across both team s while discussing strategy or actively driving on the field. We were picked as the final robot to the #2 seeded alliance by Colum bus Space Program and North Gwinnett H igh School. Our next com petition was in M acon and it was held at M ercer University.

Though we were elim inated in the second round of playoff m atches, we were able to score enough points in order to have the opportunity of com peting in the district cham pionship! Our team was also recognized for outstanding creativity in the design of our robot for our custom ?swerve?drive and 3-D printed wheels. After a week of downtim e, we were back on the road once m ore to com pete at our final com petition of the season. Through everything that we had learned over the past few weeks, our team was reborn during the cham pionship. We overcam e m any challenges and began to perform better and better as the com petition progressed. We truly tried our best, however, we were unable to gain enough points to m ake it to the World Cham pionship in Houston. Even though our season ended earlier than m any of us wanted, I can say for a fact that I am proud of everything our team accom plished throughout the season, and look forward to m any m ore with the am azing team of the 2415 W iredCats.