SVR 2017 Recap

Last weekend our team, the Funky Monkeys of Lynbrook High School, attended the Silicon Valley Regional at San Jose State University where our robot’s stellar performance helped us advance to the quarterfinals in the elimination rounds. We were excited to win the Judges’ Award in recognition for our our novel “Girl’s Subsystem Challenge,” that makes it easy for girls to get involved in designing and building our robot. The judges were also impressed by our robot’s robust and capable design.

Eesha Deepak (So.), Divya Pereira (Fr.), Priyanka Pereira (Fr.), Anika Singh (Jr.), and Ria Pradeep (Sr.) proudly display the drivetrain and gearboxes they designed and machined.

The competition started early Thursday morning, when the team arrived to prepare the robot for competition. The pit crew worked hard to prepare the robot for competition, assembling the new and reinforced gear mechanism we developed since the Utah regional. Once the robot, Punk Monkey, was up and running, our drivers showed off their fast maneuverability and high goal shooting during the practice matches. Our qualification matches began on Friday, and continued through Saturday morning. Our robot quickly climbed the rope and delivered gears to the airship. Punk Monkey showed off its impressive array of skills, and we were ready for the elimination rounds!

Shikhar Jagadeesh (Sr.) watches from the airship as our robot, Punk Monkey, successfully climbs the rope and lights up the touchpad.

When teams began selecting alliance partners,the BioMechs #841 of Richmond CA, recognized our robot’s strong climbing and gear scoring capabilities and chose us as their first pick on the fifth alliance. Together with the Robo Rockin’ Bots, #2035 from Carmel CA, we advanced into the quarterfinal rounds.

Mr. Giandomenico (Mentor) and James Jiao (So.) work together to remove rivets with a right angle drill as they attach flaps that prevent balls from jamming.

In addition to having fun at the regional, we learned a lot from other teams. For example, we were able to learn about the swerve drive that team GRT, #192 from Palo Alto, CA, 3D printed and laser cut. We also reinforced our knowledge of the robot design by presenting our work to the judges. This allowed us the opportunity to get technical awards, but it also required us to fully grasp the concepts, be prepared with our technical binder, and be able to teach someone else about them. After the regional, our team celebrated by having a team dinner along with team Mars Style, #5737 from Beijing China. This regional was both thrilling and educational, and we can’t wait to start working on a robot redesign for the upcoming offseason competitions, Chezy Champs and CalGames.