Robotics Places 2nd in State!

The Ridgeview Robotics teams overcame a huge deficit from the morning rounds to join together to compete for the Colorado State Championship as an Alliance Team in the final round.  It was the first time in Colorado State FTC history that two teams from the same school made it to the Final Championship round of the State competition. 

In the morning rounds, both teams had a hard time recovering from the jitters that come with a state competition, and a 4:00 AM start to the day .  By noon, both teams found themselves near the back of the pack with little hope of qualifying for the championship rounds.  After gorging themselves on pizza and pop, the teams strung together 5 top ranking scores to catapult them from near last to being the 3rd ranked team, earning them the right to select their own Alliance partners for the Championship round.  Ridgeview selected the guys with the Squid Hats and Capes and their own sister robotics team to form an Alliance for the championship rounds.  In FTC competitions, robots on alliance teams work together to score points in autonomous and driver driven periods, while competing on the same field, against opposing alliance team robots. Ridgeview had just set two of the highest scores in the competition with the Squid guys and their sister team, so they went into the championship rounds with a very strong team. 

In the semi-final round, they easily won the best two out of three match and earned the right to compete against the Alliance team that currently holds the world record for the competition. If that was not challenging enough, during the previous semi-final match, the Ridgeview Alliance Captain robot, stripped a servo that controls the mechanical arm for intake and scoring.  The Ridgeview team had ten minutes to rip apart the robot’s arm and replace the damaged servo and set it in the exact same position so the code would still work. After a frantic, surgery session on the robot, the alliance captain team returned to find they were down 1-0 in the finals after losing to a score that was just shy of the world record.  In the second round of the finals, the two Ridgeview teams put together their best ever autonomous period and entered the driver-controlled session with the lead but quickly found out that the servo fix failed to allow the robot to intake game elements ending the run.

Not only did the robotics teams do exceptionally well during the performance part of the competition they were also highly decorated during the awards ceremony.  Ridgeview Team 14593 won 1st place in State for the Motivate Award and team 13022 won 1st place in State for the Innovate Award which recognized the team for all of the custom engineered parts that were designed using 3D CAD systems and then printed in plastic and rubber using 3D printers, as well as the custom artificial intelligence vision and control systems implemented in software.   This award is usually given to mentor designed robots and this year they gave it to a 100% student designed robot. 

We would like to thank the Johnston-Hanson Foundation for their generous support in providing the robotics parts, 3D Modeling and 3D Printing Systems that allows the students to bring their ideas to life.

-Mr. Rhead

Please join me in congratulating the Robotics team members for their achievement:

Robotics Team 14953

Ryan O.

Jacob M.

Andrew T.

Oskar B.

Lena R.

Lena’s Little Brother

Chase W.

Tali S.

Robotics Team 13022

Damien Y.

Daniel Y.

Brady T.

Catherine A.

Camille V.

Willem S.

Omar A.

Mentors

Mr. Rhead

Miss. O’Neil

James Harding