PHRED wraps up robotics season with district competitions – Corvallis Gazette Times

The Philomath High Robotics Engineering Division team finished third out of 36 teams during district qualifying matches March 24-25 in Oregon City, but missed out on advancing to this months regional championship.

Competing in a Pacific Northwest District FIRST Robotics meet at Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences, PHREDs high finish allowed the team to select alliance partners and move on to the quarterfinals. However, the Philomath squad lost a tiebreaker in the quarters by a narrow margin to see its season come to an end.

Following a March 10-11 competition at Wilsonville, PHRED team members prepared for the Oregon City meet making software and hardware modifications over the two-week period.

Each year, the robotics teams have six weeks to design and build a robot to play a game where two teams of three robots complete various tasks in autonomous and player-operated modes.

This years game, "Steamworks," featured several tasks that the robots may perform in order to score points on a field about the size of a basketball court. Robots can shoot large whiffle balls 8 feet in the air to make a basket, deposit whiffle balls or a large gear in a low position, or climb a rope to a height of about 4 feet off the ground, all within 2 minutes, 15 seconds.

PHREDs district appearance at Wilsonville included 40 other teams from Oregon, Washington and Alaska. According to a team mentor, the largest challenge at the competition was the field equipment cutting the teams climbing rope. PHREDs robot fell three times from at or near the top of the rope but team members worked quickly to repair damage and did not miss a match.

The top-ranked 64 teams from Oregon, Washington and Alaska will compete Thursday through Saturday at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. Winners advance to the world championships April 19-23 in Houston.

PHRED officials said the team will now move into the offseason focusing on learning new skills, recruiting new members and raising funds for next year.

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PHRED wraps up robotics season with district competitions - Corvallis Gazette Times