Wilsobotics Update
At the start of this month, the Wilsobotics team headed to the South-East Regional Qualifiers of the First Tech Challenge at Langley’s School for Boys in Bromley. After months of continuous work and effort, our robot would finally be tested in the arena in the real game. However, our first hurdle was not competing in a game – it was presenting our team and our robot to a set of judges! There was a possibility of making it through the Regional Qualifiers by having a good presentation and a good Engineering Portfolio, so we had to make it as informative as possible. But after this, the competition really began.
Initially we played in the qualifying matches in the hopes of being high enough on the leaderboards to participate in the playoff matches, which in turn would let us fight to move on to the next stage of the national competition. At the end of these matches, we came sixth out of twelve teams, a decent result, but due to the system of the top four teams being able to pick their teammates for the playoffs (and these teams picking each-other as teammates!) we managed to become an alliance leader and we went through.
Our playoff matches were played fiercely, with us managing to get to the final match of the day. We were pitted against the toughest teams of the competition, and unfortunately their several years of expertise meant that we lost. Thankfully, due to being the runners-up, and due to us winning the Think award for our Engineering Portfolio, we were submitted through to the National Finals. This was the result of the entire team’s absolute dedication, from our first session in November to that day. We are extremely grateful to our sponsors and everyone who pitched in during our cake sale and have no doubt that we will work tirelessly to improve our robot in preparation for the Finals, taking place in the Copperbox Arena in June! For more photos of the Regional Competition and more updates, why not follow our Instagram page, @Wilsobotics?!
After our victory, we would like to make a huge thank you to our sponsors: Accu Components, AutomateUK, Goodcore and HxLabs. The funds and investments from these firms helped us purchase the new drivetrain and Gobilda parts which were crucial to our success in qualifying for nationals. Again, thank you to our sponsors providing us with the investment because it opened new doors to bigger, more advanced and better parts that ultimately helped secure our place within the region since it made our robot a cut above the others. With these funds, we were also able to purchase new equipment like our 3D printer and also could buy our amazing new Wilsobotics hoodies.
Furthermore, a massive thanks to ACCU components for allowing us to use some store credit. Hopefully, these new ACCU components will make us an even more formidable opponent in each and every one of our games at Nationals. ACCU have helped serve progress and not just sell components and they say they are helping drive and encourage change to help impact many lives. At ACCU they are building tomorrow – one component at a time. And hopefully the components we have are going to help advance our robot beyond limits we did not know we could achieve. Again, a big thank you to ACCU and all our other sponsors.
Article written by Adam (Y10) and Vinay (Y12)
