FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC): ORCA Student Leads Team Through Milestones Amid Regional Loss

Philipp Hall is a junior at ORCA and the leader of Corvallis High School’s robotics team, Spartan Robotics. Competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition or FRC– an international non-profit organization that aims to provide students with access to science and technology– for his second year in a row, he is the main software engineer for the team. 

Hall’s interest in robotics and electronics started at a young age. Self-educating himself in the basic principles of electrical engineering and circuit theory since 6th grade, it allowed him to develop a competitive edge that would later help him in his high school career. At the start of his freshman year, Hall enrolled in a robotics club at his local high school that brought to light the FRC competition he would later compete in for the next two years. Unaware of the competition before joining the club, his skills filled in the gaps of one of the main positions required for the team.

“Not aware of the entire FIRST organization before this, I simply began to go to club/team meetings in the off season. This is how I learned of the entire FRC competition,” Hall said. “Because of my preexisting interest, I came into the team with a lot of existing skills and so when the electrical/controls subteam lead left in the fall, I was able to become the lead of the subteam (and have been since, for two build seasons now). However, this is not at all a requirement for joining the team; the entire point is that we can teach anyone who wants to join or has an interest.”

The FIRST Robotics Competition, which starts each January with a new dynamic that challenges incoming and recurring members, is open to students from grades 9th to 12th or 14 to 18 years of age. To date, there are over 3,800 competing teams world-wide. 

Each team must consist of 10 or more members (with diversified talents like design, engineering, software, controls, and more), along with mentors and coaches per team to provide advice. Subteams or designated departments are utilized to help specific areas with specialization in regard to the robot. Members in each participating team are given a set budget and timeframe of 6 weeks to plan and build their robot, approve it for the competition, and pick two regional events to compete in to advance.

“Subteams are Design, Mechanical, Controls, Software, and BATMan (Business and Team Management). BATMan is a unique opportunity for anyone who wants to be involved that isn’t interested in developing any engineering-oriented skills; rather, this is a great chance to gain experience in various financial and management tasks,” Hall said. “Competitions begin at a regional level. We choose 2 local regional competitions to go to over the course of a 4 week regional competition period.”

Rounds are choreographed randomly, with teams competing against two parties to reach requirements, which brings the possibility of battling the same ones occasionally. Points are awarded for multiple reasons, including winning battles to gain rank points to climb higher onto the bracket. These points will allow teams to advance to other championship tiers as points are earned during the battles.

“Each will involve about a dozen matches, in which we are randomly placed in an alliance with 2 other teams (we often end up competing with and against the same teams). Each match has various ways to earn match points as well as ranking points; winning a match earns a ranking point,” Hall said. “Ultimately, ranking points determine our ranking at the event, which may allow us to progress to the semi finals and finals. Once we have completed our two regional competitions, if we have enough ranking points overall, the top teams from a district progress to district championships.”

The qualifying round is determined by the performance of the teams in the regional events. The first fifty teams that make it past the regional finals will be able to go to Houston, Texas, for the world championship. The Spartan Robotics didn’t qualify to join the world championship round.

Despite the loss that Spartan Robotics faced, Hall reflects on the milestones that his team has made in the last few years, during the year and off-season, while looking forward to another competitive start next year.

“I am proud of what the team has accomplished this year. The team has struggled since Covid and has steadily improved over the last few years,” Hall said. “We went from a robot that was nonfunctional by the end of the season (2 years ago) to a solidly built but poorly engineered robot with a few underlying issues last season to a robot this year that is quite good at what it does, fairly well put together, and never broke down in any major way.”

Hall explains the finished product that was produced by the team for this year’s competitions, highlighting the intricacy. Touting the lessons learned from previous years, he also highlighted his appreciation for the tools introduced by his teammates.

“This year’s robot has been fairly solid, with only one important and one quality-of-life electrical improvement to be made, and a couple of minor issues arising from the design. Our software for our swerve drivebase, which separates the heading of the robot from direction of travel allowing the robot to move in any direction without necessarily having to face that way, which was barely holding together last year, was never an issue this most recent season,” Hall said. “Our manufacturing capabilities have increased greatly with a few key members of the mechanical subteam getting the school’s largest CNC machine working, allowing us to make way more complex parts out of metal than we have been able to do in the past.”

Looking forward to next year’s competition, Hall testifies the effectiveness of planning ahead like many years beforehand. Improving their design year-after-year, Spartan Robotics highlights the successes and minor imperfections of the robots functionality as it approaches competitive problems.

“The work we did over the season and are continuing off season [is] putting us on the right track to achieve yet another major improvement for next year, with the software subteam working on vision (the robot orients itself in the field through the use of cameras and is able to perform functions autonomously), and mechanical and electrical preparing to upgrade our power electronics to significantly more powerful and reliable motors that can continuously output more than ½ horsepower (we must use 8 of these to power all functions of the swerve drive base).” Hall said. “Personally, I don’t care much about how we progress through competitions; I simply want a good robot, and we achieved that this year.”

With their eyes set on next year’s season, the Spartan Robotics team notes that the competition isn’t only about winning the regional qualifying rounds to advance to the world championship, but it is also about learning from other teams that are more experienced than themselves. The competitions, though cutting edge and rigorous, serve as a hub for sportsmanship and sharing tips with one another.

“At PNW, we saw FRC team 2910, Jack in the Bot, the #1 ranked team at the event that went on to be 1st pick of the winning alliance in the highest and final bracket of World Championships, winning the entire FRC Competition for this season. Certainly, they were an amazing team to see, and an awesome robot to watch,” Hall discussed. “Due to the nature of the competition, we played both with them and against them, and I had the chance to speak to some of their team members and their electrical mentor in the pits. Teams are happy to help you with your robot, explain their own robot and describe their own engineering challenges and successes, and generally be very helpful and exchange information freely.”

Hall noted the extreme openness of some teams that they were competing with, as they provided his team with resources on the effectiveness of their robot, as well as some improvements that could be added in the future. Talking with other teams, their subteams, and their mentors strengthened their desire to research more for their design next year.

“Speaking with the electrical mentor helped inform some of our decisions for the next season, such as deciding to make room in our budget for the new Kraken X60 motors, a significant hardware improvement over our own setup. The design of their object manipulator has been an inspiration for us and has sparked conversations about whether we should prototype similar concepts in the offseason if budget allows,” Hall adds. “Seeing the various successful designs of different teams at competitions is a large source of information and inspiration for future seasons, from small and simple ideas that make work on the robot easier to the ingenuity of some complete mechanisms.”

Spartan Robotics is ranked as 997 out of the 3,800 internationally recognized teams competing in the FRC competitions. ORCA’s Philipp Hall led the competition to the regional finals, in the process gaining rich experiences, memories, and knowhow that they will take to the following year’s season.