Three teams from Pecos High School joined the competition at Franklin High School in El Paso. Two of the teams consisted of students who had participated in last season’s competitions, and the third team consisted of all-new members. This year’s challenge is called Over Under. Just like its predecessors, this game is intended to simulate the environment that will surround any real-world project. “They are intended to promote creativity without punishing innovation.”
The competition has three phases: the qualifying rounds, the alliance matches, and the finals. In the qualifying rounds, each team has 5 matches, and are ranked according to the number of wins, losses and draws. Starting from the highest ranked team, each team chooses a partner team for the alliance matches. The alliances compete against each other and are ranked again. The top 4 alliances play against each other in the finals.
Our teams did well in the qualifying rounds, although they were not at the top of the rankings. However, they were eliminated in the alliance matches. The students were still positive, though, and came home talking about modifications to their robots to improve performance. They are looking forward to competing against the other teams again in the next competition