Robotics team ends season with top ranking – observer-review.com – OBSERVER-REVIEW.COM

WATKINS GLEN-The youth robotics team Mechanical Meltdown, based in Watkins Glen, ended their season ranked number one in New York state.Each year, students from around the world put in countless hours with their teammates preparing for competitions through FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). As they are building skills in engineering, technology, business, and teamwork, they also happen to be building a robot.At the beginning of each season, a new challenge is released. Teams immediately begin to analyze the game and consider strategies to maximize scores by weighing points versus difficulty versus cycle time for the various tasks. Over the next several months teams problem-solve through the entire engineering process to design, build and program a robot to complete the given challenges.Now finishing up its fifth year, Mechanical Meltdown brings together youth in grades 7-12 from a five-county area surrounding Watkins Glen. Current members hail from Watkins Glen, Burdett, Trumansburg, Ithaca, and Horseheads. The students, guided by mentors, collaborate to create a high-scoring robot, track their progress through technical documentation, and prepare a presentation to describe their season's journey to a panel of judges.Mechanical Meltdown earned advancement to the world championship for the third time in the 2019-20 season but was disappointed when it was suddenly canceled due to COVID-19. The following season was fully remote, so members were very excited to get back to in-person competitions. The tournament season begins with qualifying events where teams battle for a spot at the regional championship.In December 2021, Mechanical Meltdown won the top honor, the Inspire Award, at their first qualifier in Penfield, where they also became the first team to advance to the championship. In January the team competed again in Corning, where they earned the New York state high score of 239 with their alliance partners, #6955 Robovines from Ballston Spa.The high score held until the Excelsior Regional Championship, where Mechanical Meltdown beat their own state record... five times. Twenty-eight teams competed in the all-day event, which took place Sunday, March 6 at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica.The tournament started with a series of 35 matches where teams were randomly paired to compete against another alliance of two teams. The top four teams coming out of the qualifying matches got to choose their alliance partners for elimination rounds. As a captain, Mechanical Meltdown selected #13357 IR-Lightning from Philadelphia, NY in Jefferson County and #14281 Ravena Robotics from Coeymans in Albany County.After sweeping through the semi-finals, Mechanical Meltdown's alliance was putting up scores to make a ticket to the World Championship look very promising. However, they ultimately fell in the finals through an unfortunate turn of events. During finals match one, their alliance partner lost connection and was unable to move their robot for nearly half of the match. Mechanical Meltdown put up a valiant fight alone against the opposing alliance of two very impressive teams, losing by a narrow margin of 267-246.The final blow came during finals match two when their second partner's robotic arm malfunctioned. They were unable to perform the double-capping objective as planned and instead used their much slower mechanism to deliver ducks from the carousel.Mechanical Meltdown ends their season as the highest-ranked team in New York state with a rating of 141.9 points. The overall average for the more than 150 New York teams is 43.9 points. They also go out holding the state record with a high score of 280 points, as well as second and fifth high scores of 278 and 261 respectively.Mechanical Meltdown and FLARE operate under Trumansburg Robotics, Inc. For more information, e-mail ftcflare@gmail.com.

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Robotics team ends season with top ranking - observer-review.com - OBSERVER-REVIEW.COM