By Katrina Jesusa Nazareno
Staff Writer l The Pacific Times
NP3 Robotics teams won five awards halfway through the competition season this year.
The goal of the teams is to build robots that can fulfill the game objective within a two-minute match. The objective of the game is to shove plastic acorn-shaped balls, called triballs, into the goal. The teams with the highest amount of points by the end of the match wins.
Teams may gain extra points if their robot is not touching the ground by the end of the match, which we call elevation. The robots will be driven by the driver team’s control and use their own strategies to launch and to defend from the opposing teams. The last 20 seconds of the game, robots that are able to elevate and climb the elevation bar will earn additional points.
Most of NP3’s teams made it to the Quarterfinals at Granite Bay, CA on Nov. 4. Team B, which includes driver Julian Padilla, builders Abigail Lewis and Surya Tanikella, programmers Viktor Ramirez and Ethan Tang, and notebook person Katrina Nazareno, was awarded the Innovation Award.
The award is given to teams who have effective and well documented innovative ideas on their Engineering Notebook that is submitted. The teams who earn the Innovate Award should be one of the top contenders for the Design Award as well.
According to Tang, the most innovative idea that they accomplished is the PTO which stands for Power Take Off.
“It allowed us to reallocate motors originally coming from the catapult to powering the drivetrain. This idea was mainly developed by our lead Julian, and Katrina did a really good job keeping track of the progress, changes, and what has been built in the Engineering Notebook,” said Tang, a freshman.
Tang noted that the judges always look at the Engineering Notebook full of sketches, pictures, QR codes that shows a video of progress, and how it works when deciding an innovation award.
All of the teams competed at Ceres, CA. on Nov. 11. Team A made it to Semifinals, Team B and C made it to Finals, and Team D and E made it to Quarterfinals.
Team C, which includes programmer Alvin Ao, builders Rohan Price, Aahil Iqbal, and Jireh Owen, driver Mackaelan Songco, and notebook person Vivian Mai allied with Team B and received the Tournament Championship Award at Ceres, CA while competing against the highest ranked teams with a score of 114-92. This award is given to teams who have won throughout the matches in the finals.
“During the elimination round I was so scared and shaky of what was happening but still trying to keep happy and positive.” said Mai, a senior.
Mai also added, “Most of our strategy was basically to confuse the opposition. Besides that, playing off our strength and our alliance, Team B’s strengths were very effective.”
In addition, Team B won Design Award and Tournament Finalist Award on Dec. 2 at Chico, CA.
Design Award is given to the team who submitted their Engineering Notebook that shows the processes they went through to reach their final robot design including their goals, ideas, problems, solutions, and sketches with teamwork.
Tournament Finalist Award is given to teams who reached Finals.
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