By: Trump Vang

Recently, our Highland Robotics Team, Team 2823, or “The Automatons”, competed at the Lake Superior Regional up in Duluth. We’ve competed in this competition before, placing 5th last year. Though this time, in Duluth, our team managed to place 3rd!  At this competition, there were dozens of teams from schools all across the midwest, competing for the title of regional winners. This title allows for a team to move up into the next level of competition, or more known as “Worlds” or “Champs” due to the variety of teams that compete.

The way that Robotics competitions work is that there is a first set of matches, known as Qualification Matches. There, teams will compete in an alliance consisting of two other robots. This alliance will go against another alliance in the competition, often fighting to complete certain objectives to earn points. During these matches, teams can earn ranking points, which are used to determine the rankings of teams in this stage.

At the end of the qualification matches, the top 8 teams are recognized and made as alliance captains. From here, they’ll have the opportunity to choose two other teams to join their alliance. From this point forward, the matches are known as playoffs to define their finality. These alliances will compete against one another in a double elimination style bracket, until only two alliances are left at the finals.

Due to the hard work of our students, we were able to become an alliance captain, and get third in the competition. Though the process of getting to that point was not easy for our team. There were constant issues within our first few qualification matches that prohibited our robot from working. From lengthy testing and fixing these problems, our robot was able to function and properly compete. From that point on, the team was able to keep their winning streak until the last qualification match, where we lost due to a singular point.

In the playoffs, our team was able to stand back up, winning a few matches, but losing to the #1 seed in the competition. At this point, our team had to win every match to keep moving on, especially as it was a double elimination style bracket. These matches were close, though the semi final match would be the closest in our careers.

There’s often a phenomenon in our team known as “The Semi Final’s Curse”. It’s where our team will make it to the semi finals just to lose in that very game. Although it’s just a belief, it hung over us during this match. It was intense on stage, as they revealed the winner, though as soon as they did, we all were ecstatic. Making up for that last qualification match, we were able to win by one singular point, placing  ourselves 3rd at the Duluth Robotics Competition. This placement would allow our team to compete on the State level for Robotics. Although we would lose the next match, we were fueled by the prospect that the future had, especially with our win.

After the losing match, our team would be recognized for the “Autonomous Award”, which is an award that defines the team that had the best Autonomous (preset code that allows the robot to do certain things). Thanks to the efforts of our programmers, we were able to win that award through the sheer efficiency and consistency of our autonomous system.

This year at Duluth was a great one for the Automatons. We competed, managing to get 3rd, as well as winning an award for our outstanding programming and autonomous. Through the efforts of everyone, we were able to shine this year at Duluth, and we plan to keep doing so at our next competitions: 10,000 Lakes & State.