Greenhill’s Upper School Robotics Team competed in a scrimmage against other schools in the Dallas area on Saturday, Oct. 19.
The scrimmage was aimed to analyze the competition, observe other teams’ strategies and understand their standing for the rest of the academic year.
“We got to scope out other teams and see how they solved each of the different problems,” Upper School Robotics teacher Jospeh Meagher said.
The game involved building a robot to pick up small bricks, attaching clips to them or putting them in buckets to earn different amounts of points.
“There are multiple parts of the competition we could improve on,” sophomore Tej Sachdeva said. “To get more points, we probably want to go with the bucket. So, we need to make another attachment that can lift [the brick] up into the bucket.”
Within the arena, there is a center section called the submersible where robots can receive the bricks. Greenhill’s robot was not able to access the submersible.
Additionally, there is a section of the competition where the robot needs to do a pull up.
“We need to work on our teamwork and communication, hanging and then being able to grab the blocks from the middle,” Meagher said. “If we can do those three things, we will be golden.”
Between each competition that day, the team has 30 to 35 minutes to make changes to the robot.
“We need to be on it [while] making changes, just like a NASCAR pit crew,” Meagher said.
Greenhill’s team averaged 70 points and finished in third place.
“We did very good, especially since we have a smaller team here at Greenhill,” Sachdeva said.
Regardless of what is built, Meagher says his goal is to have it done a week in advance prior to their next competition in order to allow for a week-long testing period.
On Nov. 2, the team will have their first competition that counts towards their overall standings, and will be able to see how their robot’s changes will affect competition results.
“We just have two weeks to execute all that we need to do,” Meagher said. “Our plan for Nov. 2 is to be predictable, know what we are going to get done and have our points planned out.”
