The Brookline Bots and Team TNT hosted a First Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics qualifier at 22 Tappan on Saturday, Jan. 25 and Sunday, Jan. 26, drawing 25 teams each day from across Massachusetts. The competition, held in the Black Box, showcased students’ robots using different challenges, such as placing blocks in buckets or hanging them on poles. The top-performing teams secure spots in the state finals later this year.
Adam Rizika, who has been coaching robotics for 16 years both at the elementary and high school levels, now serves as the mentor coach of the Brookline Bots (BBOTS), an all-girls robotics team, and the co-mentor of Team TNT, a new co-ed team of freshmen. Rizika described the vision behind the FTC competition.
“FTC is this competition that was started about 20 years ago and the whole idea was to treat robotics or STEM like a sport, like football, basketball, anything, make it exciting,” Rizika said.
Junior and captain of the BBOTS Lila Cannon said that organizing and hosting the event was a chance to collaborate and take on a leadership role in the robotics community.
“Through the Brookline Robotics Initiative, we work with our sponsors and a team of girls on the BBOTS who really want to work on hosting and organizing events,” Cannon said. “We contacted FTC at the beginning of the season and worked with people at the Boston Tech Initiative.
(BTI) and expressed our interest. About two weeks before we start contacting the teams through emails we start working with the staff at BTI and then about a week before, we work with our school to get the space secured.”
Rizika emphasized the amount of behind-the-scenes effort needed to coordinate such a large-scale event. He explained that the planning process for the event spanned about a month and a half, with the last month involving more frequent weekly meetings and additional work in between. Rizika also highlighted the diverse contributions that made the event a success.
“Adult volunteers from wherever, doing judging, refereeing, doing the bake sale,” Rizika said. “We had Note-a-fy come in and sing the national anthem which is really cool, we have a student who really loves photography and works in Unified Arts in photography and he’s doing a photo shoot here and making a 30-second creative commercial out of it, so you try to get as many aspects of Brookline High involved as possible.”
Junior at Sharon High School and member of the Tech Tigers, Amulya Ponnapalli, shared how her team navigated the pressure and unpredictability of preparing for the competition.
“For us, this week, it’s been a lot of late nights, making sure the robot works because things change so quickly. We’re always trying to make it as good as it can possibly be,” Ponnapalli said.
There are many different components to competing. Some tasks receive fewer points than others and are easier to do, and some require more skill therefore getting more points. Rizika explained that scoring in the competition involved a mix of strategy and skill.
“It is not just building or programming a robot, a big part of it is score strategy, because there are easier things to do with a robot and harder things to do,” Rizika said.
Ponnapalli said her team’s strategy focused on creating a robot that could adapt to multiple challenges.
“Our goal is to just honestly score as much as we can. So that’s why we try to design our robots so they can be super versatile and score anywhere on the field,” Ponnapalli said. “That’s kind of what we’re prioritizing this year.”
Senior and member of the BBOTS Lauren Fisch reflected on her role in the robotics program and the planning of this event.
“The community of female students that we have is really great, and we all get to learn from each other and learn about coding and engineering,” Fisch said. “I help with the finances, which has been really great, and we all contribute to make these events happen.”