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Surrounded by watching teammates, Shrikar Tirumani ’29 inserts a game piece into his robot. This was one of many last minute tests to ensure full functionality of Tomahawk’s robot.
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Kneeling, Ishaan Desai ’29 aligns the game pieces to prepare for the autonomous (robot functions without human input) period. Desai was overjoyed to find that Slingshot’s autonomous score was first in the world following their initial match.
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Deep in discussion, Arnav Saraf ’29 and Adarsh Aruru ’27 work quickly to solve a bug in their program. Despite the mathematical problems involved in the programming, Saraf quickly recalculated, demonstrating immense skill throughout the rest of the competition.
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Side by side with their alliance partner (the team aiding them in scoring for this match), Viktor Nguyen ’26 and Arhaan Jafri ’27 watch their robot carefully. Communicating well with your alliance partners was a crucial part of maximizing teams’ scores and ranks.
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Pointing, Arhaan Jafri ’27 compares game strategies with his alliance partner (the team aiding them in scoring for this match). Many teams spent long hours planning their strategies between the autonomous (robot functions without human input) and Teleop (robot functions with human input) period.
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Eyes glued to the screen, juniors Adarsh Aruru and Arnav Deshmuhk analyze the problems with their code. Forced to work on a time crunch to ensure peak robot functionality, the two did not let their team down, leading Atlatl to rank fourth despite initial difficulties.
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Calmly, Sy Ripperda ’29 rips off a piece of tape to secure wires cleanly onto the robot. Though teams took a long time developing and printing large parts, small technicalities like wiring could make or break a robot’s performance.
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Examining the side of the robot, Tanner Sundstrom ’28 does a final check to secure his robot’s parts. These final checks were integral to ensure every match went as smoothly as possible.
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Thoughtfully, Saanvi Bhosekar ’28 searches the stands for her teammates. Her team, Hunga Munga, continued to show exceptional development and skill throughout the competition, ending in rank two.
Dimmed gym lights illuminate the tarps and tables covering the floor on Saturday, Nov. 15, transforming the Westwood gymnasium into a robotics area for teams participating in the For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge (FTC). After two weeks of break, Westwood Robotics teams Slingshot, Hunga Munga, Tomahawk, and Atlatl presented their newly refined robots at the FIRST in Texas GEMS League Meet 2 (FiT LM2). Once again demonstrating excellence, all teams finished in the top 10 of their divisions, with Hunga Munga at rank two, Slingshot at rank three, Atlatl at rank four, and Tomahawk at rank five.
“I felt delighted,” Atlatl member Arnav Saraf ‘29 said. “[This league meet] was a major improvement over our ranking in League Meet 1.”
While the event officially opened at 7 a.m., the gym was alive with energy well before the sun came up, packed with volunteers from the school’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team and officers in charge of organizing the elaborate event.
“The most difficult part of planning the event was probably keeping track of all the tasks that needed to be done,” Event Director Varun Sanghavi ‘27 said. “[This included] the buying and selling [of] concessions, getting volunteers, and [making] sure that they get done on time.”
Though emotions were running high due to the unpredictable nature of the competitions, many teams found their second league meet to be an easier process than the first.
“This league meet kind of just felt like another thing,” Tomahawk Co-Captain Deekshita Sivakumar ‘28 said. “Since usually the most nerve-wracking comps are League Meet 1 and League Championships, this didn’t feel that important because we just finished League Meet 1.”
Despite the reassurance that came with building experience, new challenges arose. In particular, Atlatl found a bug preventing the smooth transfer of game pieces — an especially difficult issue given the mathematics behind the software. However, with some swift calculation changes, the team was able to bounce back.
“Initially, software problems made it so that our transfer [mechanism] started bugging,” Saraf said. “The controller action that would normally go forward [was going] right instead. Our [main programmers,] [juniors] Adarsh Aruru and Arnav Deshmuhk went over the behavior of the [transfer mechanism] and reprogrammed it so that the new controls used it properly.”
Amid the fiery competition, teams could be found scrambling to check their updated statistics. Each match was updated to compare teams’ scores with other competitors across the globe. Slingshot Co-Software Lead Ishaan Desai ‘29 was especially ecstatic when he found that Slingshot’s autonomous Score (robot scoring without human input) was top in the world following their first qualification match. Even though they fell down the ranks as the competition continued, Desai took this as confirmation that his work was on the right track.
“I felt extremely happy when my auton was number one in the world, even if it was just [for a couple of hours],” Desai said. “It shows that my hard work paid off, and it allowed me to feel like our team was up there as one of the best teams currently in the world. [I felt] not only amazing, but accomplished, because of the countless hours spent on [autonomous] during the weeks prior.”
Although the season passes by quickly, FTC teams are determined to make use of every available hour to hone their skills. The Westwood Robotics teams will compete at the third FiT GEMS League Tournament on Saturday, Dec. 6.
