From Code Red Robotics PR Officer Karina Burbank:
As the school year comes to a close, Code Red Robotics is celebrating the end of an extremely successful season, and looking forward to continuing our community service over the summer.
This season began in January, when the robotics challenge for the year was announced in the annual Kickoff. This year’s game, called FIRST Stronghold, was remarkably complex and presented a fun challenge for every team. That day marked the beginning of our six week build season- the only time frame the team had to design, strategize, and build the entirety of our robot. We finished our robot, pREDator, right on schedule and had plenty of time to test and trouble-shoot before the six weeks were over.
After building our robot, the team traveled to regional competitions. Our first competition took place in mid-March, in Cleveland, OH. We didn’t make it into the quarterfinals at this competition. However, we were able to see how to improve our next robot in time for our next competition. Our second regional was the following weekend, in Rochester, NY. This competition was extremely exciting, as we continued to win and rank well. We placed 11th in the preliminary round out of all of the teams, and, as alliances were formed, we continued to move upwards. We were eventually chosen by the 5th ranked team to compete with them and another team through the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final matches. To the exhilaration of the team, we continued to do well through each of our best-two-out-of-three matches, and continued to move forwards in the elimination bracket. After a loud and exciting series of matches, we won the Fingerlakes Regional event!
Not only did this win qualify us for World Championships, but we won an extremely prestigious award as well. At the Rochester event, we won the Engineering Inspiration award, an award which commends a team’s efforts to spread STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) in their community, and continue STEM education. This award is also a qualifier for Worlds, and it includes payment of the $5,000 entry fee. Thanks to the generosity and support of many sponsors and local community members, Code Red raised enough funds to participate in World Championships.
In mid-April, 16 Code Red students embarked on the 14 hour drive to World Championships in St. Louis, MO. The Trumansburg robotics team, HYPE, had also won a regional in Albany, NY, so Code Red and HYPE students shared a bus. Due to the large number of teams at Championships, the teams are divided into 8 simultaneously competing divisions. Code Red Robotics competed in the Curie division. To the amazement and excitement of all the team members and our supporters, we were able to rank 6th in our Championships division. This allowed us to choose three other teams to join our alliance for quarterfinal matches. We won two of the three quarterfinal matches, and moved on to semifinals, where we narrowly lost our third, tie-breaker match. This prevented us from moving forward, but the team was nonetheless elated that we had been able to move to World Championships division semifinals- an extraordinary achievement. Our 6th seed ranking in our division placed us in the top 2% of teams worldwide by ranking. This is the best we have ever done in Code Red history, and everyone on the team is proud of their hard work and efforts.
“Every member of Code Red hit the ground running this January, allowing our team to produce an extremely capable machine,” says Elliot Richards, team president.
Even though the school year has come to a close, Code Red is by no means stopping. We will continue to do demonstrations and volunteer work throughout the summer. The team’s already preparing for three demonstrations for summer camps at the Sciencenter, several with 4-H, and two at local middle schools, as well as having just marched in the Ithaca Festival parade, and deone a demonstration at a local Growing STEM event.
Our remarkable success this year would not have been possible if not for the generosity and unending support of our sponsors, and every single team member is extremely grateful for your enthusiasm and encouragement.