Walpole High School Robotics Team, the Robo-Rebels, competed at the Northern FRC World Championship in St. Louis on April 26. The team has qualified for the World Championship three out of the last four years. At the Northern FRC World Championship, the Robo-Rebels placed 17th out of 67 teams in the Carson Division. The team competed in ten qualifying matches, winning six and losing four.
“We spent countless hours every day after school to build our robot,” senior Tristan Maus said. “All of our hard work paid off when we competed in [the World Championship].”
After two days of preliminary rounds, the Robo-Rebels were not selected to compete in playoffs.
“We were disappointed that we were not selected for playoffs,” senior Ryan Merrikin said, “but we were very happy to see other New England teams do well.”
The team qualified for the World Championship by taking 18th place at the New England FIRST District Championship on April 8, at the conclusion of a three day competition held at the Whittemore Center at the University of New Hampshire. The championship was open to 64 teams of students in grades 9-12. The Robo-Rebels ultimately took home the 2017 Industrial Design Award on the last day of the competition.
“[The award] is only given to teams that make really high quality robots,” said junior Matt Luongo. “Quality is something our team takes huge pride in.”
Participating in qualification rounds for the first half of the competition, the Robo-Rebels competed in three-on-three matches with random alliances. The team received ranking points by winning qualifying matches and performing certain tasks during these matches.
Next, the top eight ranked teams picked alliances for the playoffs. Finals were structured through a bracket system, with the winners moving down the bracket. The top 34 ranked teams were then selected to attend worlds.
“Our drive team did a great job behind the controls,” junior Andrew Gubanov said. “Our scouting team picked the right robots for alliance selection. The competition went very well.”
