Agnes Irwin’s robotics team finished 5th out of 64 groups in a competition at The Naval Academy in Annapolis from March 15-18. They were the only all-girl team, and they also went on to win the Creative Design award. For the sixth consecutive year, this AIS group will also participate in the regional F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) competition at Drexel University in late March.
One of only a handful of all-girl teams among the 1,125 teams competing in all 33 regional events, Femme Tech Fatale, composed of thirteen upper school students, along with faculty advisors Dr. Thomas Weissert and Greg Scott, spent six intensive weeks turning sheets of metal, spools of wire, pieces of wood and lengths of plastic tubing into a working robot. All of this work occurred in the recently-opened Arts and Science Center, which features a room specifically designed for robotics.
This year’s competition, Aim High, requires each robot to locate an illuminated target using an on-board vision system and fire seven-inch foam basketballs through a two-foot diameter goal eight feet in the air. Four different periods during the game provide teams with an opportunity to show off their robot’s capabilities. In the “autonomous” round, pre-programmed robots must locate their own goal, take aim and shoot up to ten balls within an extremely-brief ten seconds.