After finishing 57th out of 60 teams last year at the First Robotics Competition (FRC) District Championship, Madison’s team 620 “Warbots” are ready for redemption.
Madison’s Robotics team, led by president Josh Lauro (’25), aims to design a robot that is capable of fulfilling basic needs like picking things up, rather than extraordinary feats that more complex robots are capable of. Last year, the team struggled with their robot breaking down between matches forcing the team to rush to fix it. The team also struggled with disagreements over the robot’s design, leading to the season’s underwhelming result. This season, the team was more unified and stuck with one approach, finishing weeks earlier than they did last year.
This year, the robot, “Harley Quinn,” named for its distinctive red and black coloring, is designed to pick rings up and launch them into a high goal and a low goal. The robotics team itself is composed of several subdivisions each taking on a different role. The robot starts with the design team who use a computer aided design (CAD) program to draft the robot. The next step is the physical prototyping, where the chassis (the wheeled base connected by metal) is built. Then the electronics division takes a turn to wire up the robot. Lastly, the programming team codes the robot to perform their desired function. On a team with so many moving parts and strict deadlines, the team still makes sure to emphasize enjoying the experience as well.
“Robotics is really cool because we get to build a robot together and compete as a team,” Lauro said. “Most people come in knowing nothing about STEM and leave as experts.”
The Warbots season began in August, when new team members were recruited and basic plans for the robot were established. Starting in January, the team prototyped their robot. After completing the robot in , the team will travel to compete in local competitions within the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Chesapeake District. At the end of the season in April, the top 10-15 teams across all the divisions will go on to compete in the FRC championship, colloquially referred to as “Worlds,” in Houston, Texas. During the four weeks of regular season competition, individual teams choose to compete during two of the weeks. Each competition consists of three rounds, one preliminary and one double elimination final round. Teams also form alliances with other teams that last the duration of the competition. Alliances are chosen by the top eight teams to then go up against each other in the final rounds.Each alliance made up of differently ranked teams competes against other alliances for the overall win, although individual teams also receive a ranking.
The Warbots attended their first competition on Friday, Mar. 1. They placed fourth out of the 29 teams competing. This was an unexpected win, as the team entered the competition seeded eighth. The biggest victory however, was the narrow loss the Warbots took against the top seeded team, losing by only 10 points when it wasn’t expected to be nearly that close.
During the 12 qualification matches, competitions have a driver, who controls the wheels and directs the robot, and an operator who controls the mechanisms on top of the robot. The robot is then directed to display its abilities and teams are awarded points based on their ability to fulfill the given challenge. This year, the robot has held up much better during competitions and was completed in mid-February rather than right before the competition.
“Our team was a lot more organized this year as well, and we were done building the robot’s main structure weeks before we ever have been,” Daphne Jallion (’25) said. “This year, we have also had more driver practice and programming time than ever before, setting us up to hopefully have a great season.”
At the district final competition, the Warbots finished with 6 wins, 5 losses and 1 tie; resulting in a 10th place finish out of 29 teams. The team suffered a difficult start, losing their first two matches due to other robots in their alliances having issues.