Since January 6th, the Jesuit FRC Robotics team has been relentlessly preparing for the upcoming FRC competition “Crescendo.”
The sound of drills whirring, wrenches cranking, keyboards clicking, and clanking metal echoed throughout the robotics lab as the team worked furiously to design and fabricate the perfect robot for the upcoming competition. After weeks of brainstorming, designing, building, and programming, the team prepares their final robot prototype for the upcoming competition. Each member has played a crucial role in the process, from the builders who crafted the robot’s frame and components, to the design team who designed and prototyped the entire robot. The team has faced countless challenges and setbacks along the way. There were times when the design wouldn’t work as intended, and parts had to be remade and reinstalled, but the team persisted, working long hours and putting in extra time on the weekends to make sure everything was perfect. As the competition draws near, the team is filled with a mix of excitement and nerves. They know they’ve put in the hard work and are confident in their robot’s abilities.
Emilio Castillo notes: “Everyone has a great time down here, we enjoy working with the machines and really understanding the process that comes behind building a robot. It is truly a pleasure to work with my Jesuit brothers on something we all enjoy doing. My job specifically is to use the CNC machine down in the lab, and it works like a charm, cutting out all of our metal tubes and frames from the initial CAD designs. Overall I’m very excited for our upcoming tournament, I feel that the team is adequately prepared and it will definitely be a fun experience.”
The Competition
Teams will compete in the video game-inspired arena with their robots. The robots are required to collect “notes” and place them in their alliance’s scoring elements, all while trying to prevent their opponents from doing the same.
In this game, two alliances, with three teams in each, compete against each other to score notes (ring-like objects) in three different field elements to amplify their speaker, get onstage, harmonize with their teammates, and take the spotlight before time runs out! Each Alliance earns additional points for cooperating with their opponents and hanging off a chain suspended in the air.
During the first fifteen seconds of the match, robots are autonomous. Operating solely off of pre-coded material without guidance from their drivers, robots score preloaded game pieces, collect and score additional game pieces, and leave their starting zone to gain more points. During the remaining two minutes and fifteen seconds, drivers control their robots. Robots continue to collect notes from human players at their substations and deposit them into their amp and speaker. Each time an alliance plays two notes in their amp, the human player can hit a button to amplify their speaker for ten seconds. Notes deposited in an amplified speaker are worth more points than those scored in an non-amplified speaker.
As time runs out, robots race to get onstage and deliver notes. Bonus points are awarded for harmonizing, in which robots onstage hang together on one chain suspended near their starting positions. The alliance that earns the most points wins the match!
The competition is fierce, with over three thousand teams from around the globe competing for the championship title. The teams are judged not only on their robots’ performance but also on their innovation, design, and teamwork skills. The winners of the 2023 “Charged Up” FIRST Championship, who went undefeated through both the Hopper Division and the Einstein tournament, was team 1323, MadTown Robotics, from California, team 4414, HighTide, also from California, team 4096, Ctrl-Z, from Illinois, and team 2609, BeaverworX, from Ontario, Canada.
We hope to compete with all of these amazing teams this season and we look forward to having a great competition.
Stay tuned to the Jesuit Roundup for more robotics coverage!
