On the snowy morning of January 7th, 2017, mentors and members of the Hingham High School Robotics Team, the Hammerheads, met in Room 103 for a momentous occasion.

At 10:30 a.m., their build season officially began when the challenge for this year’s event, FIRST Steamworks, was announced. Every year, the organization that facilitates robotics competitions worldwide, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), hosts a live stream online announcing the challenge that teams must design a robot to solve.

Last year’s challenge, FIRST Stronghold, tasked teams with designing machines to perform in a simulated castle siege, crossing over obstacles and firing boulders into a castle tower. This year, the challenge is even more complex and intense.

FIRST Steamworks is a robotics challenge focused around the pop culture ‘steampunk’ movement. This craze centers around the technologies of the Victorian era, and the idea of beauty in machinery. Common themes of steampunk include complex machinery, inclusion of gears and pipes, and overall appreciation of antique machines.

The objectives of Steamworks are less centered on defensive and offensive tactics than previous years. There are three main objectives of the FIRST Steamworks competition. Robots are tasked with collecting ‘fuel’ in the form of small wiffle balls. Robots will then fling those balls into a faux steam engine, earning points for their alliance, a team of three robots.

Another objective is to collect large, plastic gears that are used in order to rotate a rotor on one of the field pieces. This piece, a simulated airship, contains two members of an alliance, and alliances earn points for the number of propellers in motion.

Finally, robots may also scale a rope attached to the airship to earn points for their robot alliance.

There are two stages of competition in FIRST Steamworks. The first is thirty seconds of autonomous mode, where the robot relies on code to operate and completes tasks to earn points, such as collecting fuel and gears. The other portion of the Steamworks matches is 2 minutes and 30 seconds of teleoperated mode, where the drive team controls the robot and works to achieve the objectives mentioned above.

Junior Dylan Davis, a veteran member of the Hammerheads, was present at the event and had some thoughts he shared about the competition. He told me that he “would like to make the robot less reliant on driver expertise by implementing autonomous coding and making sure the controls are understandable and accurate.” Dylan also felt that the Hammerheads definitely have a chance to win a district event.

This year’s team is larger, and with a larger scope of students than in previous years. The Hammerheads have a mix of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Senior captain Kate Murray is excited about this varied team.

Kate feels that “this year we have a really unique group because of all the walks of life everyone is from and how different this year is from past years.” Captain Murray also thinks that the Hammerheads are going to, “gain a lot of insight from all the new perspectives, so overall I think this year is going to be really inventive and fun.”

The Hammerheads’ other captain, senior Kyle Thorne, was among the contingent of team members that attended a kickoff event at Northeastern University. I reached out to Kyle to gain her impressions of the event.

“There wasn’t as much excitement and viewing as previous years because of the snow,” she said, with regard to the snow storm bearing down on New England this past weekend, “but I think everyone is really excited about the competition.” Furthermore, Captain Thorne added that the season is going to be, “a good challenge for both rookies and seasoned veterans”, and she really looks forward to it.

As the Hammerheads begin their eight week build season, there are also ways for readers to get involved. Any students are still able to join the team if they are interested. Also, students and parents can attend the team’s competitions at Bridgewater-Raynham High School on March 10-12, and Bryant University on March 23-25.

Additionally, if you would like to support the Hammerheads more directly, please consider donating to their GoFundMe page, found here.

Please follow the Harborlight for updates on the Hammerheads and all of Hingham High’s other outstanding teams.