Four Porta-Botz! teams traveled to Council Bluffs, Iowa for the US Open Robotics National Championships last weekend and two came home with national honors.
Team "K"- Ilija Kirov, Grant Kappes, and Sara Mitchell were crowned National “Design Award” Champions. And, Team “Porta” - Scott Watson, Payton Bailey, and Connor Edwards won the National “Think Award”.
The “Design Award” is presented to a team that best demonstrates an organized and professional approach to the design process, project management, time management and team organization. The team’s engineering notebook is a clear, complete documentation of the team’s design process. And, the team is able to describe how they implemented an efficient and productive design process to accomplish the project goal through a quality and professional team interview.
The "Think" Award is presented to a team that developed and effectively used quality programming as part of their strategy to solve the game challenge. Key criteria include: All programming is cleanly written, well documented, and easy to understand. A clear programming strategy is used to solve the game challenge. The team demonstrated their programming management process, including version history. The autonomous code is consistent and reliable while demonstrating quality teamwork, interview, and professionalism.
The national tournament featured 400 teams and the Porta-Botz! were honored to receive national distinction twice.
In tournament play, it was Deja vu for team Porta from last year’s bid at Nationals. They were just one win away from the championship match when their alliance partner shattered a gear to become disabled. Playing alone versus their opponent's two robots, they lost by only a few points. For team K the situation was similar. Seeded 6th, their alliance partner's robot became disabled early in the match and they could not go it alone, losing to a lower seed in the opening round of Eliminations.
Teams Porta and K turn their focus to the VEX Robotics World Championships from April 24th to the 27th in Louisville, Kentucky. Both teams qualified for the Word tournament by winning VEX’s highest honor, the “Excellence Award” at their qualifying tournaments.
Those interested in helping the teams to the World tournament may support them through donations, sponsorships, or purchasing a commemorative T-shirt following the links below.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/j7pfy-send-robotics-students-to-worlds