Robotics team wins World Championship
The Knight Vision robotics team is the 2022 FRC World Champions. The team traveled to Houston, TX to compete against robotics teams from around the world at the George R. Brown Convention Center. More than 450 teams attended the four-day event that celebrates STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Teams from as far away as Israel, China and Turkey were at the competition.
Knight Vision, who paired up with Up-A-Creek Robotics-FRC Team 1619 and the Cheesy Poofs-FRC Team 254 to form the Blue Alliance, won by more than 30 points in the final match to solidify the win.
“Playing with so many other teams at such a high level was an incredible experience that we will never forget, and we are so grateful to have been able to attend,” said sophomore Isabella Haladjian.
Kimberlee Galea, Upper School science teacher and FIRST Robotics Competition head coach/robotics coordinator, said this was the first time Liggett has won the world championship and the first time the team qualified for the event based on points. She said teams in 2015 and 2018 attended the championships, but they did so through a lottery/waitlist invitation.
Each year, teams are asked to create a robot that can complete specific jobs.
“Our task this year is to drive around a field and shoot oversized tennis balls into an 8-foot-tall goal that is 4-feet in diameter,” Haladjian said. “In the last 30 seconds of the match, our robot has to traverse across a set of ‘monkey bars’ to reach the highest bar and earn points.”
Galea said the Knight Vision’s design allowed them to reduce their cycle times and store more cargo.
“The simplicity of our robot’s design was the most surprising feature,” Galea said. “There are very few components that required maintenance throughout the season. We only had one electrical failure all season, and that occurred while we were at the World Championship. Because of the simplicity of the robot, the kids were able to easily identify the source of the problem and fix it before the next match."
The Knight Vision team consists of seniors Cooper Ondersma Noah Sanders, Tommy Mulder, Ella Harvey, Taveon Colston and Rose Jewell; junior Erica Hayes; sophomores Isabella Haladjian, Maddie Updike, Jacob Sanders, Nate Caudill, Eric Ford, Jermaine Calloway, Luke Yoshida, Raiven Mitchell, Desirai Mitchell, Christina Howard, Summer Doris, Jessica McDonald, Joss Harvey, Jake Juip, Leo Zeng, Felix Swanson and Robert Chen; and freshmen Max Goerlich, Matthew Nicholson and Claire Juip.