Waring School's 'Wolfpack Machina' wins highest award at robotics world championship
1 hr ago
Members of Waring Schools Wolfpack Machina robotics team with judges.
BEVERLY Wolfpack Machina, Waring Schools varsity robotics team, wrapped up their season by receiving the highest overall award, the Inspire Award, at the First Tech Challenge World Championships last month.
The award, which over 7,000 high school robotics teams compete for, is given for the teams design, programming, outreach, teamwork, and a variety of other categories denoting the greatest overall performance. Beyond that, the team was also the winning alliance captain of their division and scored enough points to reach the highest offensive power ranking and come out of the season with the top ranked robot in the world.
This has been a passion project for these kids, said Francis Schaeffer, the teams coach. We had our first season back when they were in seventh-grade and theyve become really one of the best teams out there through a tremendous amount of hard work.
Since its inception six years ago, the Waring Schools robotics program has created several outreach programs to give opportunities to work with robotics to underserved communities. Most members of the Wolfpack came from the First Lego League (FLL), a cheaper and simpler version of the First Tech Challenge (FTC). Now, through programs from Beverly to Rwanda, the team is using FLL to provide students a means of exploring the world of robotics they may not have otherwise had.
We had a program in Everett, which started five teams this year and its about making sure that these kids have somewhere to start. But then as were moving forward, it really would be a shame if since its a middle school competition they would only be able to participate in robotics in middle school. So were also working on helping start FTC teams as well, said Kaden Cassidy, one of the teams main programmers specializing in designing patching software for the robot.
The teams outreach program in Rwanda, spearheaded by team member Amerlia Wyler, started the first 33 FLL teams in the country.
She and some other kids on the team are potentially going back to Rwanda next year as well to grow the program with more FLL teams and then potentially help start FTC teams, said Schaeffer.
While the team members often serve as mentors, they also have mentors themselves amongst 44 business and STEM professionals in the community.
We frequently have design reviews with them in which we go over our thought process and why we think it addresses challenges in the game, but then ask them if weve made any oversights or what we could improve. This has led to a lot of ideas which has allowed us to make a really robust and complex robot, explained Cassidy.
One example is ShopBot, a company that produces CNC (computer numerical controlled) routers that the team bought for use in competitions. After approaching ShopBot, the Wolfpack became the companys first high school robotics team sponsor, who provided financial contributions but also invaluable, hands-on mentorship from people who understand the machines inside and out.
They helped us improve our manufacturing speed by 50% just by having a meeting with them and being like this is what were doing. Then they walked us through what we needed to fix and really made our part manufacturing a lot more efficient, said Cassidy.
Its really enjoyable to be able to, like, make something from scratch. Its like you really get to see the entire engineering process and make something from nothing on all hardware, electrical, software, perspectives, said Collin Keegan, who specializes in creating the robots programming architecture, much of the subtle control work for the limbs, and the vision recognition system.
With varying ways to get involved including programming, branding, designing, engineering, presenting, script writing, and outreach, members of the Wolfpack encourage any interested student to participate.
From the people you meet, the things you get to do, the skills you get to learn, and the other people you then get to teach those skills to and see them gain that same passion its just amazing, said Keegan.
The entirety of Wolfpack Machina includes Alma Power, Amelia Wyler, Owen Reimond, Owen Cooper, Charlie Pound, Olga Gadmer Langman, Thomas Davis, Olive Sauder, Chris Douglas, Peter Hanna, Beverly Cassidy, Kaden Cassidy, and Collin Keegan.
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Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 9:00 am