Kennett High School wins the VEX NH/Vermont State Robotics Championship.

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1 Kennett High School wins the VEX NH/Vermont State Robotics Championship. This past weekend, the Kennett Coders from Kennett High School won the NH/Vermont State Championships and qualified two teams for the Vex Robotics World Championships. The NH-VT State Vex Robotics Championships were held at NHTI in Concord on Saturday February 28 th. To compete in this event, teams needed to qualify by winning or being a finalist in earlier regional competitions this year. Within our region consisting of New Hampshire and Vermont, there are a total of seven slots for teams to go to the 2015 Vex Robotics World Championship. When the event ended on Saturday, Kennett Coders had won four of the seven slots completing a near sweep of the event. Only 400 teams from around the globe can participate in the Vex Robotics World Championships. There are 11,000 teams across the world in 29 different countries. This State Championship Win represents the hard work by the entire team. [Insert Team Photo Here] 5106A (Tomas Sandstrom, Marianna Robinson, Olivia Deblois-Hill, Reece Bradley, Hannah Shepard) 5106B (Michael Doucette and Carter Stevens) 5106D (Clyne Sullivan, Andrew Belle-Isle and Nathanael Mathieu) 5106E (Cathy Sandstrom, Tait Dickinson, and Taylor Bouchard) 5106C (Andrew Lavoie, Jake Cotter) 1

2 For weeks leading up to the state championships, Kennett Coders teams 5106A led by Senior Tomas Sandstrom and 5106E led by Junior Cathy Sandstrom focused their efforts on winning programming and driver skills at the regionals. The Programming skills and Driver skills challenge winners qualify for the World Championships directly. The best skills scores that are taken across all of the events held through the year would be named the winner for the programming or driver skills event. Following the final qualifying event of the year, 5106A was ranked 2 nd in Programming skills and 5106E was ranked 2 nd in driver skills going into the State Championships. They were behind team 4886A from Thetford Academy Vermont. The challenge was to improve their performance and make the jump from 2 nd place to first to take those spots. During the 3 weeks between the final event at Pembroke Academy, the team 5106A led by Tomas Sandstrom made a radical change to the robot by rebuilding the lifting system, with a focus on improving speed and accuracy. A normally very risky move paid off within days of the decision to make the change. As soon as the new design was running, it was clear that the new design could score better than almost any robot in the region. It could also score so high that it could be ranked in the top 5 in the world. The design alone, though, could not do the job. A complete rewrite of the robot s programming and a multitude of hours spent testing it was required to make this robot come alive. After 3 weeks of focus, 5106A had reached its goal of reliable programming skills scores that should win a ticket to the world championships. What we 2

3 didn t know at the time is if any of the other teams had made the same jump, but only the state championships would tell the story. Team 5106A was not the only team that went through changes before the event. Team 5106E led by Cathy Sandstrom and Tait Dickinson know that their robot has been one of the top robots throughout the year, but they both knew that change was needed in order to become the best. They were very skilled with accuracy, but not with speed. If they wanted to be able to win the championships, they would have to perform changes to their robot, which is exactly what they did. Tea 5106E took a less radical approach with changing their robot, but also a very effective one. Recognizing that two systems in their robot needed improvement, 5106E increased the speed of their lift motors by replacing the 100-rpm motors with 160-rpm motors. The risk here was that the 160-rpm motors stall sooner and cannot move the same loads as the 100-rpm motors. Only testing and trials would tell the story. Additionally, the team designed a new system for grabbing cubes (one of the scoring elements). With this redesign, team 5106E was able to effectively score twice as many cubes at twice the speed compared to before. In the 3 weeks between Pembroke event and the state championships, the teams 5106A and 5106E completed the changes and focused their efforts on training for a multitude of hours each day before the competition. Their effort paid off in the end. Meanwhile teams 5106B, 5106C and 5106D were working to make improvements to their robots and code. As a team focus, teams worked together to improve the design and performance of their robots with a goal to score faster and better. 3

4 Arriving at the state championships on Saturday morning, the Kennett coders still had challenges to overcome. Team driver Michael Doucette for 5106B was unable to make the trip at the last minute, leaving the team to scramble to drive a robot that needs a great deal of practice to score well. Nathanael Mathieu stepped in to take Michael s place and was faced with the unique challenge of controlling a very fast robot. Despite a nearly heroic effort to control this robot and at times an almost comical robotic display, team 5106B did every thing it could do to compete. In-between every match Carter Stevens was connected to this robot working on the programming to slow it down so that a human could operate it. Finally by qualification match 6 this robot was able to score and won it s last 2 matches. If any there is any question that these events are challenging team 5106B will attest to how hard it is. Team 5106D, now consisting of Clyne Sullivan and Andrew Belle-Isle, had mechanical challenges that needed to be overcome. At times during the competition, their pit area looked like a MASH unit. With parts everywhere, this team performed a complete surgical dissection of their robot, changing the design and adding a unique mechanism for scoring to the robot. Looking from a distance, one could see what appeared to look like a sail that was swinging from side to side under robot control moving cubes were the robot wanted to. This design change, led to being selected as one of the 24 finalists and advancement to the semi-final round in the state championships. Team 5106C, consisting of Andrew Lavoie and Jake Cotter, had a great elimination round leaving this team in great shape to be selected for the championship rounds. But in a twist of fate, and a selection process that caught everyone by surprise 5106C did not get selected for the championship round. The selection process for the championship rounds start at the end of the elimination rounds. The top 8 teams are automatically chosen and are allowed 4

5 to select any of the remaining team as alliance partners. In the VEX robotics events, teams of 3 robots make up a single alliance. With 8 alliances a total of 24 robots can compete in the championships. If your robot does not finish in the top 8 spots, you need to be selected to compete. When robots select other robots, they look for robot attributes that will fill out the team s abilities so that the alliance has the best chance of winning. In this selection process, a number of surprising selections were made. For example, Pinkerton Academy 241A who was in the finals of every event this year, was not selected and ended up being the 5 th ranked team in the championships. Pembroke Academy who qualified 11 teams for the state championships and were 5 th in the world championships last year, did not qualify any of their teams for this years worlds. Team 5106A finished the qualification round 2 nd with a plan to select 5106E as his alliance partner. That plan went out the window when team 6191A who finished 1 st selected team 5106E as his alliance choice. These setup a Kennett high school vs. Kennett high school in the finals, or as some called it, Brother vs. Sister in the finals of the event. In the championship rounds, scoring was high and the teams were very good; however, the consistency and flexibility of the team 6191A from Rivendell Academy, our team 5106E, and the team 40K from Trinity H.S. were too much for the other teams. The finals were decided in the final seconds of the 3 rd match of the best 2 of 3 where 5016E (Cathy Sandstrom) beat her brother 5106A (Tomas Sandstrom) and secured another qualifying spot for the world championships. 5

6 When the matches completed, the judges presented their awards. The highest award given at a VEX robotic competition is the Excellence Award. It is an award that combines all aspects of the robotics competition from engineering notebook, robot design, programming skills score, driver skills score and rank in the qualifying round final position. This year, Senior Tomas Sandstrom in his final high school regional event and his team (5106A) was selected as the winner of the Excellence award at the State Championship. What a way to end a high school career in robotics events. 6

7 The Judges also awarded the Create Award for outstanding robot and unique design to team 5106E Cathy Sandstrom. 5106A and 5106E both double qualified for the world championships, and with the way that the rules work, Teams 4886A from Thetford Academy Vermont and 241F from Pinkerton Academy would also now qualify. This would not all be possible without support from the Mount Washington Economic Council, MWVFirst, Whitehorse Press, RLSAND Inc., Kennett High School and many other volunteers who support and work with the team. Special thanks goes to our new coach Joe Riddensdale and Rich Biche Director of MWV Career and Technical Center, coach s Ron and Leeann Sandstrom along with all the parents who are now mobilizing to fund raise to cover the expenses of this 3 rd trip to the Robotics World Championships. 2/28/15 NH- VT State Vex Robotics Championship Excellence Award (VRC/VEXU) 5106A Kennett High School Tournament Champions (VRC/VEXU) 5106E Kennett High School Tournament Finalists (VRC/VEXU) 5106A Kennett High School Programming Skills Winner (VRC/VEXU) 5106A Kennett High School Robot Skills Winner (VRC/VEXU) 5106E Kennett High School Create Award (VRC/VEXU) 5106E Kennett High School 7