In their final match of the season the robotics team competed against 50 other teams at the Midwest regional March 29-31 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, advancing to the semi-finals. The team also won the Innovation in Control award for its use of machine learning and computer vision.
This year’s competition, Crescendo, had a diverse ruleset, requiring several different functions to be condensed into the team’s robots.
“I think one of the things about how robotics works is that every year there are so many different ways to earn points and score, and approach the strategy of the game each year,” said team member Asher Grossman. “One of the challenges this year is that you have to pull your robots up onto a chain, and we incorporated that into other parts of the robot that we already needed.”
In addition to the functions that were required to be incorporated into the robot’s parts, the rise in the popularity of computer vision and machine learning lead to the team utilizing two types of vision which would make scoring easier.
“We knew this year we really wanted to use it to the fullest extent, because it makes driving easier, which means the drivers can be more focused, and stuff can happen faster,” Asher said.
Despite electrical issues and camera disconnections in the first two competitions, the computer vision helped the team earn the Innovation in Control award, as well as a spot in the semifinals.
“I personally was not super confident,” Asher said. “The combination of having had issues at our first two competitions and seeing the powerhouse teams that were gonna be at this third one made me a little concerned, but we ended up doing so much better than I would’ve expected.”
