FTC Robotics Team Wraps Up Successful Year With Regional Championship Appearance—See the Video!

St. Margaret’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team wrapped up a successful season last weekend at the Southern California/Greater Los Angeles Championship.

 

Led by senior Espen Garner, finishing his sixth year on the team, the squad of Upper School students Preston Brinker, Emma Chang, Skyla Cui, Jack Justus, Chloe Lias, Alexis Lindenfelser and Benjamin Simpson was the first St. Margaret’s team in several years to advance past the qualifier round to the regional championship. The Tartan team, named the Ad Hoc Bots, won second place for the Innovation Award during the qualifying tournament.

 

FTC looked a little different this year—the team has been meeting since September, with on-campus students working on the physical robot build, while concurrent students worked on code and design using CAD software.

 

This year’s robot picked up foam rings and launched at various elevated targets, with different point values for each target. The robot can run in autonomous or user-control modes.

 

“The FTC competitions were remote, where teams run match rounds within an allotted time, then self-score and submit our performances,” said FTC club advisor and computer science teacher David Lin.

 

Mr. Lin encourages students interested in joining next year to reach out to the 2021-2022 team captains, Preston Brinker and Chloe Lias, for more information.

 

Check out this video the team put together demonstrating their impressive robot and its capabilities!