The Galileo Robotics team recently participated in 2 local robotics competitions, posting impressive results. The first was the San Francisco Regionals, where they placed 25th out of 55 teams, while in the second competition, the East Bay Regionals, the team achieved the very impressive ranking of 9th place.
The score achieved for the San Francisco Regionals placed them solidly in the top half of teams, but In the East Bay Regionals, the team outpaced their own expectations. “This is the first time we’ve been to playoffs in 15 years, and the first time in our team’s history that we’ve won a playoff match,” explained senior Davia F., Outreach Officer of the Galileo Robotics team.
The goal of the competition was to have the robot be capable of handling different types of game pieces, explained Mr. Tan, director of the Galileo Robotics Team. The robot had to be capable of handling both the balls and the pipes, receiving them from a loading station, and then placing them accurately in specific locations on the field.
The teams are informed of these goals ahead of time, and then must build robots capable of achieving them. Some sections of the competition are performed autonomously by the robot, meaning there is no human control, while other sections have drivers on each time driving the robot across the field. In the building stage, teams run tests on various capabilities of the robot, but it’s often difficult to test for how they will perform on a real field with other contestants.
“The robot took 3 weeks to build,” added Mechanics Officer Leland Lam. “The hardest part was making changes that weren’t originally in the plan, like adding an extra arm.”
Although the team didn’t reach the championships this time, they hit a major milestone by reaching playoffs for the first time in over a decade of the team’s history.
