ALBANY ACADEMIES QUALIFIER
1 ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT
FTC Team #4654, the Jellyfish, competed in their second qualifying tournament of the season on January 13th at the Albany Academies. The team made it all the way to finals, receiving the 1st place Inspire Award, 2nd place Think Award, and 3rd place Design Award.
OUR ROBOT HANGING IN A GAME.
The team competes in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), where teams build and program robots to overcome specific obstacles and challenges. This season’s game, Centerstage, involves the robots picking up “pixels” and depositing them onto a slanted backdrop. Robots can also launch paper airplanes and hang from a truss in order to score more points.
In Albany, the Jellyfish competed against twenty-seven other teams from across the New York-Excelsior region, which encompasses all of NY state barring the NYC and Long Island areas. Teams compete in randomly paired alliances of two, which encourages cooperation in the midst of competition – a key FIRST concepx called “Gracious Professionalism”.
2 ABOUT THE TEAM
The Jellyfish’s driver crew consisted of co-presidents Taka Kimura and Joaquin Otero as robot drivers, assisted by Lead Programmer Jeffrey Kuo as their driver coach. Sophomore Jocelyn Zheng acted as the team’s human player, making her the first non-senior of the season to participate in the driver crew.
JOAQUIN OTERO, JEFFREY KUO, AND TAKA KIMURA MID-MATCH.
The Jellyfish would also like to thank our advisor, Dr. Julie Kenyon! In addition to dedicating countless hours of her time to our team, she has been of immense help in coordinating team activities and efforts.
3 OUR ROBOT
Following the Jellyfish tradition of naming our robots after influential women in STEM, this season’s bot is named Michele, after Dr. Michele Sugantino.
Dr. Sugantino, affectionately nicknamed “Doc” by her students, taught chemistry for 18 years at our high school and pioneered our science research program.
The primary objective of our robot is to intake in pixels and dispense them onto the slanted backdrop.
Our robot intakes pixels using wheels of silicone tubing, to push pixels up our CNC-cut aluminum ramp. We then deposit pixels using our custom 3D-printed outtake, which releases pixels in a “garbage dump” manner. Pixels can be deposited individually with the use of another gecko wheel. Our drivetrain is built with mecanum wheels, which allows our robot to move and strafe in all directions, regardless of its field orientation.
LEFT: MICHELE FROM THE SIDE. HER VERTICAL SLIDES ARE HALF-EXTENDED, AND THE INTAKE RAMP IS RAISED.
CENTER: THE LOWERED INTAKE RAMP CONTAINING TWO ROWS OF SILICONE TUBING TO INTAKE PIXELS.
RIGHT: A CAD RENDER OF OUR CUSTOM OUTTAKE, DESIGNED TO INDIVIDUALLY DEPOSIT PIXELS WITH THE “GARBAGE DUMP” METHOD.
4 TOURNAMENT OUTCOME
FTC tournaments are split into two stages: Qualification, where every team plays five matches; and Finals, where finalist alliances are eliminated from the competition after losing .
QUALIFICATION MATCHES
The Jellyfish went 3-2 in our qualification matches, finishing in 9th place overall. We briefly held the tournament record for highest number of non-penalty points scored in a match.
FINALS
We were selected to the first seed alliance, capxained by Team 6955 RoBovines, along with Team 8397 Beta. Together, we swepx our way through semifinals and set a new NY-Excelsior region record. Though we won our finals match, winners were determined in a best-of-three manner, and our broader alliance lost 1-2.
AWARDS
We won the following awards at the competition:
Inspire Award 1st Place
Think Award 2nd place
Design Award 3rd place
Finalist Alliance Member
Through the 1st place Inspire Award, we qualified for the New York-Excelsior Regional Championship, which will take place on March 3rd at the Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York.
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!
UPCOMING TEAM EVENT DATES:
Peekskill Qualifier: Saturday, February 10
1072 Elm St, Peekskill, NY 10566
NY Excelsior Regional MVCC Championship: Sunday, March 3
1101 Sherman Dr, Utica, NY 13501
Spring Junior Jellies session begins: Spring 2024 - Date TBD!
Blind Brook Middle/High School
Creaticon: Tuesday, May 16
Blind Brook Middle/High School