This past weekend, the Hingham High School robotics team, also known as the Team 5000 Hammerheads, had their first competition of the season at the University of Rhode Island (URI). After many months of building, coding, and preparation, their hard work and dedication certainly paid off as they had a remarkable performance at their first competition of the season.
The HHS robotics team competes in a league hosted by FIRST Robotics, a non-profit, global organization that promotes young adults to pursue engineering. This innovative organization oversees high school competitions worldwide, including competitions in the New England region. Teams can compete in two qualifying events per year, in hopes of eventually making their district’s regional finals. The Hammerheads had a great showing this past weekend at University of Rhode Island’s competition, aligning themselves with the top teams going into their next competition at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
FIRST robotics tournaments are intensive weekend-long events, broken up into qualification matches and playoff matches. Each team competes in twelve qualification matches, partnering with various teams to form alliances. Vi Palmer, a captain of the robotics team, describes some of the strengths and challenges of the team’s alliances, “In qualifier 19, we were able to score alone and won the match against three working robots. Although it was not our highest scoring match, being able to win against a full alliance all on our own deserves a lot of credit and shows just how well our bot can perform.” In this specific matchup she is referring to, both of Hammerhead’s teammates both had dysfunctional robots, meaning they could not compete. Despite this, the Hammerheads were still able to secure the victory.
The Hingham High School Robotics team ended the qualifiers with a record of six wins and six losses. Despite this 50/50 split, some of the robot’s individual statistics were very impressive. For example, the robot was one of the best statistically in the “auto” category, meaning that their robot performed very well when the human player was not controlling the robot, and it was all run off code. After the qualifiers were completed, the top eight ranked teams each selected two other robots to join their alliance. Although the Hammerheads were not one of the top eight seeds, they were one of the top teams that were selected, which is a big accomplishment. In the playoffs, the Hammerheads and their alliance were unfortunately eliminated, but they only lost by a small margin. After the competition ended, a panel of judges gave out awards to teams that excelled in a certain area. The Hammerheads won the “Innovation in Control” award, an outstanding achievement.
After their first competition, the Hammerhead’s set themselves up well for a push for the district competition. Logan de Laar, also a captain of the robotics team, believes there is still a lot of work to be done to achieve their goal. He states, “We have spent a lot of time tuning our autos to perfection, making us one of if not the most competitive auto robot in New England. Much of this past week has been spent fine tuning what we must perfection and trying not to change too much.”
Going into their final competition, this team is filled with excitement for what this next competition at WPI will bring!
