Citrus Circuits secures spot at World Championships

PHOTO: Citrus Circuits, Davis High’s robotics team, won the Sacramento Regionals with a team score of 180– a world record for this year’s game.

By Elliot Dejong,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Davis High’s robotics team, Citrus Circuits, won the Sacramento Regional tournament alongside San Jose’s Cheesy Poofs team and Woodland’s Digital
Minds team on March 26.

The team collectively set the current record for this year’s challenge—180 points—and secured themselves a spot at the FIRST robotics world championships later this month in Houston, Texas. FIRST robotics picks a new challenge each year in January. This year’s challenge is called Rapid React.

“There’s a two-level hub in the middle of the field that you’re shooting cargo into,” team lead Ellie Bair said. The ‘cargo’ is oversized nine inch tennis balls, color coded red or blue per team of three.

The robot must pick up, sort through, and launch balls into an eight foot high hoop centered in the middle of the court.

One round lasts 2:30, and the robot must operate autonomously until the :15 mark. Bair says their robot can score five times in the first 15 seconds.

Teams can also earn additional points by having their robot climb a series of four bars in the last 30 seconds.

“(They’re) essentially angled monkey bars that you climb up,” Bair said. Senior Helena Young is one of the two drivers of Citrus Circuits’ robot.

“My job is to hit the buttons that do everything except the driving part,” Young said. “That means intaking balls, shooting balls, (and) climbing.”

When not at competitions, Young is part of the hardware design team.

Citrus Circuits also won the Chairman’s Award at the competition, in recognition of its community outreach programs. These programs include youth robotics
competitions, Citrus Service, and international outreach to other robotics teams.

“(Community outreach) is the stuff you do besides build a robot,” robotics teacher Steve Harvey said. Harvey came back to teach robotics during semester two of this year after retiring because DHS had not been able to find a replacement.

“Our goal is to win the world championship again,” Harvey said.

The robotics team is split up into six subteams: business and media, hardware design, hardware fabrication, hardware electrical, software scouting and software robot. Senior Elie Bukowski is part of hardware design and is also the strategy team lead.

“This last competition went really well,” Bukowski said. “Strategy-wise, our mentor said it was the best it had ever been.”

Bukowski’s strategy team works closely with software scouting to analyze other teams’ robots and explore potential partnerships. Strategies largely depend on the skill of the two teams Citrus Circuits is paired with.

“In certain strategies you’re going to want to have three offensive robots, all shooting at the same time,” Bukowski said. “In other strategies, you’re going to have one robot doing something on the field.”

Robotics competitions have two main stages: the seeding rounds and the competition rounds.

During the seeding rounds, teams are randomly organized into groups of three and play a match against another trio. Teams are then ranked based on individual score during these matches. Davis ranked third at the Sacramento regionals.

Once teams have been ranked, the top eight pick their partners. Those trios go on to play in the competition bracket.

Bukowski says competition rounds are more predictable and thus easier to strategize for. The variety of possible trios in seeded rounds requires more flexibility.

“You usually end up playing against every team and with every team once,” Young said. Junior Emily Xia won the Dean’s List award for her impact on the team. Xia is one of the software team leads.

“She’s really impressive,” Bukowski said about Xia. “I’m proud to see her honored for that.”

Moving forward into the next competitions, the team agrees that they are well prepared. “We definitely had some technical little issues … but I think as a team we worked really well together,” Bair said. “These competitions are 80% luck, 20% skill and we brought all of our skill.”