Celebrating its fifteenth season, Walpole Robotics RoboRebels FRC Team 1153 is off to a promising start. In their Week Zero preseason event held in Nashua, NH, the team was in the coveted first position for alliance selections and won the overall event. They just finished their first qualification matches at Worcester Polytechnic Institute placing 15th of 40 teams and being selected for the 4th alliance. Sadly an “unbreakable” component broke in the second match of the quarterfinals, ending their quest for a win.
The RoboRebels after bagging up the robot at the end of the six-week build season.
They proudly accepted the team award for Industrial Design sponsored by General Motors, which “celebrates form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively addressed the game challenge.” Each of the students and mentors has spent at least 100 hours, so far, designing, perfecting, and continuing to improve the robot.
This year’s game is called SteamWorks, and involves a series of maneuvers requiring the 119 lb. robot to collect large plastic gears and deliver them to an “airship” manned by a human player. They must also pick up “fuel” (aka, Wiffle balls) to create pressure in the “boiler” – a large hopper where the fuel is delivered. The final 15 seconds require the robots to climb the airship, which is several feet high.
Each match has three robots per side and one’s partner for one match may be his or her opponent the next, so “coopertition”(competitive coop-eration) is encouraged.
To watch upcoming matches, visit firstinspires.org or walpolerobotics.org for streaming instructions. Members of the community may also follow Walpole Robotics on Twitter and Facebook.
The next competition is at Bryant University March 25 and 26. The public is welcome and invited. Walpole Robotics is now a 501(c)3 organization currently looking for sponsors to support the robot build, upgrades to the machine shop, and assistance defraying student travel expenses.
