Aidan Crowley ‘21
June 2021
In early March of last year, our Greenport/Southold Robotics team faced an unprecedented roadblock that ended our season: right before our last competition at Rochester, a countywide lock down sent us back home indefinitely. It was very deflating for the team to be sent home like this. This was especially the case for the class of 2020, who had their last competition season cut off before it even started.
Even at the beginning of this school year, there was uncertainty over whether there would be a season. By January, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), the organization that oversees the international robotics competitions, finally confirmed there would be a competition. However, it would be different than usual. The competition was adjusted so that, rather than centering around an in-person competition, each team would have the option to take on three separate challenges.
The first challenge was “Infinite Recharge At Home”. “Infinite Recharge” was the game of the 2020 season. (Each year, the game is switched to an entirely different one with a new set of rules). For this challenge, teams used the robot they built last year to attempt a host of time and accuracy trials where the best attempts were recorded and sent to FIRST. This challenge proved very valuable for the team. In 2020, the entire drive team was seniors. This challenge gave a lot of experience to an entirely new team of drivers, which will be very valuable next year when (hopefully) we return to a normal season.
Even though the robot was already built from the previous season, the build team still had work to do. The new trials did not require the use of certain parts for the robot required last year, so this season we had to remove these unnecessary parts. With our newfound space, we made many adjustments to the robot that we wanted to do last year, and it made it the best it could possibly be.
The second challenge was the Game Design Challenge, a new concept where teams were asked to design and come up with a ruleset for a completely original game. If the judges at FIRST like the game, they said they would try to implement it in a future game for a competition. A section of our team broke off from the rest to work on this project. At the end of the season, they gave a live presentation to judges over zoom about the game.
The third challenge was the FIRST Innovation Challenge, which we did not participate in. The goal of this challenge was to attempt to solve a real world problem with the skills learned in robotics.
Despite the obstacles we faced this year, our team had a very successful season. For our At Home Challenge, we came in 2nd out of every team in New York, and we ranked 27th overall out of nearly 1500 teams worldwide. Our game design team won the Designer’s Award, which celebrates a team’s outstanding overall success in the challenge.