District Championships! 2024 Season in the Books.
This past week, the Lobstah Bots made the trek out to Springfield, MA, for the 2024 New England District Championships for three days of robotics and fun. Although we came short of qualifying for the world championships, the team performed at a high level on the field, even earning an award. Ultimately, this is one of the team’s most competitive seasons in history, and we are incredibly proud of everyone’s work (especially our new freshmen and sophomores who stepped up to the challenge and put in so much effort!). Furthermore, none of this success would be possible without your direct contributions over the past year and beyond, so a huge thank you to all of our wonderful donors.
Our drive team – George Baltus '24, Kendree Chen '25, Veronica Hui (mentor), Maxwell Yu '25, and Sharon Xiong '27 (not pictured) – bringing the robot onto the field.
Maxwell Yu '25 and George Baltus '24 shooting a note into the speaker during a match.
We are super excited to announce that on the final day of the competition, we won the FIRST Innovation in Control Award! The award is given to a robot with an “innovative and unique” control scheme that is “integrated with the machine, human players, and strategy” in both “concept and execution.” Our robot’s practical and sleek mechanical design paired with impressive auto-align and LED signaling in software made our robot stand out and win the award! The programming team combined our gyro, robot odometry, and cameras to locate its place on the field at any given time, and then used this localization to inform auto-align movements. On the robot, the team also used two beam break sensors to know when the shooter was possessing a note (game piece). If you wish to read further, the programming team spent lots of time synthesizing our coding techniques and processes in our 2024 Robot Documentation.
The Lobstah Bots pose after winning the Innovation in Control Award!
As our official competitions come to a close, we could not be happier with the passion and culture of the team. Everyone’s caring and supportive attitudes shined bright this season, and from the start of January, each and every student worked week after week to build an impressive and high-performing robot. Even as we faced setbacks, no one backed down from a challenge and our organizational skills kept us on track to finish the robot in the nick of time. As our senior and team captain George says, “While I’m sad to graduate and leave the team this year, I couldn’t choose a better group of people to continue leading it into the future!” And, finally, we won't forget the incredible effort from all of our mentors this year! Each one of them took so much time out of their busy schedules to supervise and teach everyone on the team, and the Lobstah Bots would not be the same without them!
The whole team gathered after our matches to talk and take some claw-some photos like this one!
The Lobstahs had a lot of fun on our trip! Coco Shen '27, Leeza Ciccarone '27, and Sharon Xiong '27 lead the van ride while Maxwell Yu '25 takes a chaotic selfie in one of our hotel rooms!
While we may be taking a break, the Lobstah Bots aren’t done just yet! We are working out plans to attend off-season events this summer and fall, and we’re always searching for more opportunities to attend events and network in our community. Stay tuned for further updates in the coming months!
Thank you for all your contributions! If you want to be more involved or have any questions, you can email us at lobstahbots@gmail.com and we would be happy to respond!
Sincerely,
The Lobstah Bots
