Lakehill’s robotic team advances to Regionals

By Anna Knickel

On December 4, Lakehill Preparatory School’s Robotics team made its debut at the FIRST Tech Challenge Qualifier at Marcus High School. The FIRST Robotics Competition is an international high school robotics competition that gives students real-world engineering experience. The Lakehill Bionicles and their robot, Lewa, placed 16th among the 22 scheduled participants from across North Texas.

The Lakehill Bionicles won two out of the six matches they competed in. In each match, the team was randomly paired with an alliance partner to compete against two other teams. Lewa had to complete tasks such as autonomous movement, intaking, moving game pieces, and driving over difficult terrain. 

The whole competition was a team effort. Throughout the day, team members drove the robot, helped other teams, adjusted code, made alliances with other teams, fixed robot parts that broke, and spoke to judges about their experience in FIRST. 

During the awards ceremony at the end of the competition, the team won second place in the Think Award, which is an award for the application of science and math principles in the building/design of the robot. 

Lakehill Bionicles won first place in the Control Award, an award for the usage of sensors and programming ingenuity, and also won second place in the Inspire Award. The Inspire Award is the overall award for the competition — strong field performance, design, programming, outreach/business programs and judging. Due to the Inspire Award, the Lakehill Bionicles have qualified for the Regional Competition!

The team can’t wait to compete in the next competition on January 29 as well as the regional competition on February 26. Thank you to all of the teachers, mentors, sponsors and outreach partners for helping this competition go successfully and smoothly.