Antipodes, the Terra Nova girls robotics team consisting of Kjersti Chippendale, Emma Filar, and Violet Replicon, battled 31 other teams in the Northern California FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Championships March 4 and came away with its third straight trip to a world championship.

After the girls won their qualifying tournament six weeks ago, they immediately began working to increase the height of their robot’s (now named Archie, short for Archimedes, after the ancient screw design they’ve recently incorporated into their robot) forklift and add an arm to score balls with magnets hidden inside them. The lift redesign was extremely ambitious, nearly doubling their previous height in the same amount of space. Every fraction of a millimeter was precious, and the girls had to learn to use an end mill and lathe to machine precision parts. The girls invested hundreds of hours and finished fabrication just in time; with programming, final testing and just a few minutes of driving practice extending late into Saturday night. See www.theonerobot.com/2011-ftc-robotics/the-challenge for information on this year’s challenge and scoring system.

Ominously, the girls drew the first match of the day, but walked away relieved with a solid 125-0 victory that belied the challenges that were to follow. No longer was their robot finding unobstructed paths during their match’s autonomous periods (when robots are pre-programmed), and they faced robots capable of extending from their 18-inch initial height to more than 10 feet in the air for scores upwards of 200 points. In some matches they were able to post big scores, and in others they were thwarted by the opposition or accidentally foiled by their playing partners.

They seemed to have an easy win in their second-to-last qualifying match, but learned they had picked up a major 40-point penalty along the way, resulting in just a 4-4 tie. Their last match was against two of the best teams, whom they could not defeat, resulting in a 12th place finish to their six qualifying rounds.

Fortunately, the girls were selected as an alliance partner by one of the teams that faced them in their qualifying tournament, and easily won their semifinals matches, though not without torturing their fans along the way.

With time running out in match two, Violet began raising the lift as they reached the top of their ramp. However, Emma could see they might not quite make it over the top at their angle of approach, so she put Archie into reverse, much to Violet and Kjersti’s horror. Archie swayed all over the place. As their robot teetered forward, Emma used the robot’s momentum to drive onto the ramp and eventually settle into an upright position.

The finals pitted the girls’ three-team alliance against the cream of the tournament; who had also easily dispatched their opposing semifinalists. But the toll of contact robotics began to wear on all the teams, and Antipodes’ alliance captain team was off in the corner tearing apart their robot, meaning Antipodes would represent the alliance in match one.

Nothing seemed to happen when Violet tried lowering an arm to capture their alliance’s bowling ball, but actually she was winding their lifting cable around their winch’s axle. Later they discovered that an obscure button on her controller had been enabled, swapping some of the controller outputs. The girls could only watch their alliance get trounced and fall behind 0-1 in the best of three tournament finals.

Meanwhile, their alliance captains were high-fiving each other in the corner of the tournament hall, meaning they had repaired their robot, allowing Antipodes some time to try to extract their cable and repair their forklift.

While the girls were arm-deep in their robot, they learned that their partners had eeked out a close match, but that their other alliance partner’s robot was now disabled. Soon there were two teams within a few feet of each other trying to get their robots working for the final match of the day.

Antipodes’ alliance captains used a five-minute timeout to buy their partners time, and waited to see if either team would be able to join them for the final match or whether the eight-hour tournament would end in an anticlimactic forfeit. Emma finally extracted the lift cable from the axle as the head ref came over to notify both teams that there were three minutes to match start, but there were still 30 feet of lifting cable to restring through 26 pulleys in confined space.

Meanwhile the spectators were watching another drama play out on the field: unbeknownst to the girls, the strongest team was also arm-deep in their robot trying to replace a critical burned-out motor.

With one minute remaining and their forklift nearly reassembled, the girls had to make the difficult choice to abandon their effort, tied up their lift cable in a huge knot, and learned that their other partner’s robot was still inoperable. Antipodes hustled their robot onto the starting platform with only the ability to capture and score their bowling ball (their magnet ball scoring device blocked by the inoperable lift). There they heard the head ref warning the opposing alliance to put down their tools immediately, and the boys’ screwdrivers and wrenches fell to the floor. Could it be that the opposing team’s best robot was inoperable?

Archie ran though its autonomous program unobstructed, scoring itself and the bowling ball for 20 points, while their partner robot made it to the other scoring area, giving them the lead going into the final tele-operated (driver-controlled) period of the day. The girls scored the bowling ball into the platform goal for 30 more points, contributing their robot’s current maximum potential.

However, the opposing alliance had done enough to make their best bot serviceable, lifted a scoring element to the sky, and won the match and the applause of the fans and the TN girls as time ran out.

However, FIRST robotics is about more than match performance. The judges appreciated Antipodes ‘ ambitious concepts, CAD development, and precision fabrication, and as a result nominated the girls for awards in both robot design categories. They were also nominated for their connection to their community, and won the Promote Award for their public service announcement video. The girls will never know if they would have won any of these awards outright, because (with the exception of the Promote Award) the top three winners of the Inspire Award (which combines all award categories) are prohibited from winning in the other categories. The girls took second place Inspire, making them one of the three teams that are advancing to the world championships in St. Louis, April 25 – 28.

The girls would like to thank the Pacifica community for your encouragement this season. There will be a fundraising dinner on Thursday, April 19 at Rock n’ Robs, in Rockaway Beach, to help pay for some of the parts that will go into the final changes to the robot before the world championships. Just mention the girls’ robotics team and they will receive 15 percent of the sale.

If you would like to make a direct donation, inquire about a sponsorship, or simply learn more about the team and robotics, please visit www.TheOneRobot.com or call 359-9835.