News
High Peak Youth Robotics – they’ve only gone and done it again!
Twelve young people from our High Peak Youth Robotics (HPYR) group travelled to Sheffield Hallam University on 25 March to compete in the East Midlands & Yorkshire qualifying tournament of the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) UK.
Both of our teams competed – the senior team ‘Peak Bots’, most of whom took part last year; and our new junior team, ‘Peak Gears’, most of whom are new to the group and FIRST activities.
The day started with competition checks, to ensure all the robots aligned to the rules, and the presentation of the team portfolios. The portfolios document the progress of the team during the challenge, explain why they did what they did, and who was involved. Teams are awarded points from a judging panel which are added to their match points for the final competition rankings.
After a few practice matches, came the qualification matches. 14 in total with 11 teams taking part. Our teams competed against schools, colleges and one other community-based group. In the competition, matches are played alongside an ‘alliance’ team against two others in their own alliance. In one match, the two HPYR teams were drawn against each other!
Junior Team
Due to being new to the process and challenges with building the robot, Peak Gears had only had 25 minutes practice with their final robot before the regionals event! Understandably, they were nervous about competing, but they worked on the robot in between matches, amending code in order to score more points and not incur any penalties, and fixing mechanical issues. They had some really close matches, winning one of their practice matches and were competitive in all their qualification matches.
“For me, the real winners of the day was our junior team. All stepped up to the challenge and got involved right from the start: programming on the fly, robot repairs, team working – not just together but with other teams! A breakthrough for them all.” Jason, Technical Support Worker
“I’m so proud of the junior team for their contribution to the day. They clearly learnt so much, had a great time and I think, next year, they’ll have a robot to reckon with. Where they were before they started, compared to where they have got to now, is remarkable.”
Senior Team
The senior team, Peak Bots, having taken part last year, got “straight into team mode”, interacting and building alliances with other teams, presenting their porfolio and answering judges’ questions with confidence, and working well as a team, with their individual roles. For this, they were awarded the ‘Connect’ award by the judges.
Their matches went extremely well, winning five of their six matches and becoming the second-highest scoring team on the day, ranked third overall. This performance resulted in them being picked as the alliance team by the top-ranked team for the play-offs semi-final and final.
Last year, they made it to the play-offs, won their semi-final but lost the final. This year, however, their alliance won both their play-off matches – whoop whoop! You can see the winning moment in the photo below (excuse the FIRST commentator!). For this, they also won the ‘Winning Alliance’ award.
“Brilliant day for all – and for all the tangible and the less tangible (just as important/more important) wins…” Julia, Project Administrator and parent
The Outcome
Only two teams were to go through to the national finals, of which Peak Bots were not one, due to not finishing the day with enough points. A shame, considering the greater achievement to last year, but it was a great day for all. So, we started to make plans for our final session with the group and wrap up the project. Cut to two days later, and we were informed that the team had actually qualified! So we’re off to London again!
Can you help get the robot to Nationals?
The national championships will be held in London on 21-22 April. We need to raise some money to get the robot and team to London. If you would like to sponsor us, please donate via our GoFundMe account – https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-send-our-youth-robotics-team-to-the-national-finals-26
See more photos and find out which organisations and local businesses have supported the group on the project page here.
