The robotics students from Team RUSH 27 were both excited and surprised when they finished second place in the FIRST Robotics State Championship in Grand Rapids, April 11.
“I was a little surprised because we were expected to be in 50th place,” said Cody Hughes. “We were expecting to be one of the last picked.”
“I am more of a numbers person so I was looking at the rankings over the state and I thought for sure we weren’t going to make it to playoffs,” Diana Marsala added.
Jared Harper explained instead the team being a third round pick they were in the first round picked fifth.
“It put us in a really weird spot we weren’t expecting turning out well for us,” he added. “Our second pick wasa really good robot and we were able to multiply their score by capping off the stacks we made.”
For this year’s competition, the challenge was stacking tote bins on top of each other, putting a pool noodle in a recycle can then placing the can on top of the totes in a time limit of two minutes and 30 seconds.
“It is a whole new strategy because people said this year’s competition is less than a game and more like a job,” said Andrew Luchenbach. “You just go at it and do your job. If you do your job well you get a lot of points.”
He added another reason why the team didn’t know if they would do well in the tournament is because they picked a risky stragedy they would grab the can off the middle of the step.
“The cans we specialize in stacking those multipliers so we have to have something to multiple,” he said. “For our first few tournaments we really didn’t have that good of partners that was why we were worried. We were lucky to get the partners we did that’s how we made it so far.”
The team finished in second in a formed alliance with Waterford Kettering Captains Team 3098 and the Mech Warriors Team 573, which is the combined team of Marian and Brother Rice high schools.
“Our robot was completely dependent on others making stacks for us,” Melchoir Vester added. “We were specialized in the recycle cans and doing the multipliers by placing them on top of the stacks.”
“We took good robots and made them even better,” Luchenbach said. “We let them do what they do and what we specialize in.?
“We put a lot of team work into it,” said Harper. “We made it so teams can focus on one thing. When you are focused on one thing you can do better at it. They focus on stacking and we focus on cans and it goes better like that.”
The team members added they did have an issue along the way. The night before the last day of the tournament they were practicing. One of their sensors failed and the robot drove backwards at top speed into a wall. It broke welts on the wrist and they had to replace the whole claw on the robot.
“Luckily we had a spare and it took us about two hours to get it working again,” said Luchenbach. “But finding the root cause of the problem took an hour to fix it.”
It also happened at the end of the day so they thought about it during the night and came back to it in the morning with a plan on how to fix it. Plus, their first match wasn’t until noon.
“By the time our next match started we were up to normal operation,” Zach Peterson smiled.
“The drive and pit crew did a great job,” Marsala added. “We have some really bright minds who were able to get it done quick.”
The team finished in theFIRST Robotics World Competition during the weekend in the finals of the Galileo division. But before they left for the world tournament they were brainstorming on what they could do especially when there are 75 teams in each division and eight divisions.
“We are already thinking what teams could be paired and what teams we could be paired with and how we can use best our strategy of capping and being a can stealer to get us as far as we can,” said Harper. “We will do extensive scouting during the weekend to find those teams and be in a position to be picked by them.”
Team RUSH finished seventh in the state, based on the season points and scores. They also won the Entrepeneurship Award and Dean’s List Finalist Award for Marsala.
More highlights from the season include finishing as a quarterfinalist in the Livonia District Competition. They were ranked tenth and picked by third seed. They also won the Team Spirit Award.
They finished the Woodhaven District Competition in second place where they were ranked fourth and picked fourth seed. They won the Creativity Award during the tournament.
During the Northern Lights Regional in Duluth, Minnesota they finished as a quarterfinalist and won the Entrepreneurship Award.
For more information, please check out Team RUSH 27 at www.teamrush27.net.