Davis Robotics Team Wins Big in St. Louis Tournament

A team of Davis students won big at a robotics tournament in St. Louis last week. Here's their story:  

Davis’ own Team 1678 Citrus Circuits, the DJUSD robotics team, won the Curie Division Championship at the FIRST World Championships held in St. Louis, Missouri April 24 to 27. Citrus Circuits is a club sports team composed of students from Da Vinci and Davis High Schools and the three junior highs, meeting at Da Vinci High.

FIRST Robotics is an international program that strives for excellence in education following the STEM programs. It allows students grades 9-12 to experience engineering challenges to further their understanding of real world principles such as team communication, dedication, and technical skills that will be invaluable in their future careers.

Each year, FIRST devises a new and exciting challenge beginning with a six-week “build season” when the robots are constructed and ending with a series of competitions. This year’s contest was “Ultimate Ascent” in which robots shot Frisbees and then climbed a pyramid frame.  The two minute and fifteen second matches were played between alliances of three robots. 

Citrus Circuits was among 12 out of over 2,700 robotics teams to be a FIRST World Championship Finalist. To become a FIRST World Championship Finalist, Citrus Circuits first led 100 robotic teams after the qualification round, and then advanced through three rounds of eliminations to win the best two out of three matches. As the highest ranked team, Citrus Circuits was the Alliance Captain and chose two robots to join it in an alliance with which to compete in elimination rounds.    The alliance of Citrus Circuits, Team 148 Robowranglers from Greenville, Texas and Team 862 Lightning Robotics from Canton, Michigan shot and climbed their way to the Curie Division title.

Much like the NCAA basketball tournament, four divisions, named after the scientists Newton, Curie, Archimedes, and Galileo each produced an alliance to proceed to the “Final Four” matches. Those robots then compete against each other for the title of World Champion for that year on the Einstein field. 

Team 1678’s alliance played the winners from Archimedes in the first semi-final.  In the first match, Citrus Circuit’s alliance won 233-201, securing the highest points scored in the Einstein rounds.  Citrus Circuits lost the second match when a power cable came loose midway, and finally lost the third match.  The championship was won by an alliance captained by Team 1477 Texas Torque from The Woodlands, Texas.

When asked about the competition, team captain Helena Molinski said, “Attending world championships was amazing. Our team won our division and made it to the semi-finals of Einstein, which is farther than we had ever hoped to go. This year was a big year for the recognition and competitiveness of our team, and it was incredible to be a part of something bigger than myself.”

Of note, after working to analyze previous years’ match results, Citrus Circuits developed a sophisticated scouting system that enabled the team to identify other alliances strengths and to select a preferred alliance.  The system, unique to FIRST, used eights Android tablets to feed data to a central offsite server.  The data was processed and then displayed on an iPhone app that could be easily accessed by the team’s coach, Steve Harvey, a math teacher at Da Vinci Charter Academy, and members of the team driving the robot.  Students developed and assembled all of the programming and hardware used in the system.  The team is exploring means of developing this system as shareware with other robotics teams.

FIRST also emphasizes “gracious professionalism” and “coopertition.” In that spirit, Citrus Circuits shared its scouting data with a rookie team that had placed third in qualification to assist in alliance selection.  The team also shared a portion of its tickets to the Einstein finals with the team that placed second in qualifications, Team 1983 Skunkworks from Seattle, Washington.  Skunkworks had previously helped Citrus Circuits in preparing its robot and has a family connection to the team.

The team kept fans, parents and sponsors abreast of events in St. Louis through Twitter and Facebook.  Fans will be able find links to videos and photographs from the event on Facebook and at the team’s webpage, www.citruscircuits.org.

Citrus Circuits team members learned more than about robots, scouting, and sportsmanship. They also performed their own fundraising. The students raised over $35,000, starting with a large contribution from UC Davis schools and colleges including a late season championship contribution from the Chancellor’s office.   Other large contributions came from the Da Vinci Boosters Club and the Blue & White Foundation. The Sunrise Rotary Club and DTL/Mori Seiki also made significant contributions.

To qualify to attend World Championships a team must either win a qualifying event or an award. Citrus Circuits won the Central Valley Regional earlier in the year which qualified them for a spot in the competition.