ISD Robotics Team Sets Sites on World Championships

The ISD Robotics Team advanced to the semi-final match of the Greater Kansas City FIRST Robotics Competition. The First Bots of Independence (FBI) team, comprised of students from all three district high schools, competed in nine matches March 17 and 18.

During competition, teams compete in alliances with two other teams in three-on-three matches lasting two minutes and thirty seconds. Members of the FBI Robotics Team take on a variety of responsibilities, including operating the robot, presenting to judges, programming and scouting the competition.

“During the match, teams use their robots to place gears on pegs and shoot fuel represented by green wiffle balls into a tall boiler and a low goal. At the end of the match, our robot climbs a rope to score more points. We focused our robot on the gears and climbing the rope at the end of the match to score the most points,” FBI co-captain Renan Troy said.

Only five out of the sixty competing teams qualified for the FIRST World Championships next month. The FBI Robotics Team did not qualify for the World Championship last weekend, but they hope to qualify for the fourth year in a row at the Midwest Regional Competition in Chicago beginning March 30.