Robotics Championships! Taking a Byte Out of the Competition
Throughout this year, our very own Culver High robotics team 702, the Bagel Bytes, have been doing great things! From kicking off involvement in the Cube Satellite program, to touring Virgin Orbit, to participating in the JPL Challenge, community outreach, spaghetti dinners, and most importantly, tackling robot Build Season, the Bagel Bytes have had a very successful year.
This season started off quite well; though with a hectic last few weeks to Bag Night, where after the 6-week build season ends, at 9:00 pm, the team needs to put the robot in a sealed bag with tags and paperwork.
Kaden, a pit crew member interviewing the robot
Despite the team not having tested or even turned on this robot, named Garçon, before they even went to their first 5-day competition of the year in Monterey Bay; with the team’s high-end social skills, team connections, and amazing design, they managed to WIN their first ever regional competition in 19 years (even with the robots arm being knocked completely off during the Finals and minor mechanical breaks toward the end of the competition)! With this unbelievable and emotional moment proceeding the extremely intense, nail-biting matches throughout playoffs, the Bagel bytes would go on to compete in FIRST Robotics World Championships in Houston, Texas in late April after the completion of the team's second Aerospace Valley Regional competition.
The team took several prominent team members to the competition, Safety Captain, Diana Martinez called it “An amazing experience [where she] was able to meet so many different teams from around the world”. Diana even enhanced her own skills and became a better person and engineer, “I learned so many strategies from past years by attending a 2 hour long workshop, and learned quite a bit about electronics from some of the booths. I also enhanced my gracious professionalism and was able to learn about other cultures (from teams from other countries)”. Another Drive Team member and Technician, Darrius Gay reflected on the “team work on a global scale… showing the world moving toward the future. I realized that us students are the future, further inspiring me to be an engineer to better our world”.
Aside from the tedious pit-work, seminars, scouting, and making strategic team connections during the competition, our team had a lot of fun and made plenty of friends! According to Martinez, robotics is “The hardest fun you’ll ever have!
The venue was so big and we were definitely busy while we were there. Everyone had a task, and we all found a way to make it fun. Some of us (Keoni and Kaden) made a video of us interviewing our robot, and it was really entertaining (check it out on Instagram @frc702)”. Team members had plenty to explore around the enormous venue. Gay mentioned that the team “Went to a botanical garden, played hide and seek, went to a team bonding breakfast, and most importantly, played SUPER SMASH BROS”. The finale on the third day of Championships was amazing, “with fireworks on beat to music”.
However, many of you may want to know how our robot ranked! Here are some stats; Gay says Garçon was “doing pretty well, staying in middle to high ranking on the Galileo field, he ranked 5th-6th for a while [the team back home was ecstatic and hugging each other in the halls at school while watching the international livestream], but then the CAN wire came loose from all the matches the bot did, and dropped in rank”, followed by another related problem, resulting in a loss of 2 qualification matches, tumbling the team down to rank 30. Despite the rankings though, Garçon’s cargo (ball) collection system was top-notch, leading the team to prepare for a top 8 Seed Alliance to potentially choose the Bagel Bytes for Playoffs. Sadly the team didn’t get picked, but there was no time for disappointment because they had in-person seats to arguably THE most intense FRC matches in 2019, the Best of the Best, Hall of Fame teams competing against one another. The Cali alliance took home the W!
The Champs team watching finals in the stadium.
Coming home from Champs, the team decided to initiate some much needed team restructuring. This year, believe it or not, the team had a money crisis, forcing a group of representatives to spend days going around to local businesses and clubs to build up money to add on to the Gofundme page. Amounting to a twenty-thousand dollar cost to ship Garçon and the team to Texas. Gay explains, “We need fundraisers, writers, and entrepreneurs. People that want to be their own business owners to advertise and allow our team to flourish. People that want to explore both sides of tech in mechanical and business and media side”. Martinez emphasizes “Robotics is more than just robots! Without our business team, we wouldn’t be able to function. Currently, only a handful of people are handling that. That needs to change. The most successful teams understand how essential taking care of finances are, and in order to create a better relationship with our sponsors we need a large business team. If you’re interested in joining, help us out! [leadership of the business team get to come to all important competitions and give presentations to win the team awards]”.