From Feb. 29 to March. 2, the Summit Robotics Team, Chaos Theory, competed in the annual FIRST robotics competition in Oregon City. After months of hard work, this was the first tournament of the season. 

FIRST is the leading youth robotics competition worldwide, and it has been held annually since 1989. Every year, FIRST designs different forms of games and tasks for each team to solve and compete with each other. 

This year, the main goal of all competitions is to pick up the orange field elements (called “the notes”) that look like huge doughnuts and carry them close enough to shoot them into goals (the lower goals are called amps and the higher goals are called speakers). At the very end, the robot has to reach upwards to grab a chain and pull itself up above the ground. 

The team’s robot is named “Hyperion” for the largest of Saturn’s irregular, nonspherical moons. Hyperion has intake rollers that pick up the notes on the field. On the opposite side, the shooter sits on an elevator that moves vertically; it takes in the notes and shoots them out into the amps and speakers after being collected by the intake rollers. 

“This year has been the fastest schedule we have ever run through… we… made it to a scrimmage before the first placement competition, so we are well ahead of where we have been in previous years,” said Thielsen Wardlow, a Summit Junior and the Chaos Theory team captain, pointing out that we can expect better results this season.   

After the weekend’s tournament, Luke Garland, a Summit junior and one of the main robot drivers on the team said, “For me, our last qualification match was absolutely the highlight. We… [defeated] the #1 ranked team at the event because of our solid strategy, communication, and effort throughout the match.” It was the only match where the top-ranked team was defeated. 

Overall, the team competed in 12 matches and finally reached a middle-range ranking through both the qualification matches and the playoffs.

“I am super proud of the team and how well we performed. There is work to be done to do well at our next competition, but we have a plan to get there!” said Natalie Hummel, a strategic consultant and the head mentor of Chaos Theory. 

The next competition will be another qualification match held in Yakima, Washington from March 15 to March 17. If the team does well, they will move on to the state tournament. 

“This is only made possible from the truly wild hours put in,” says Wardlow. “And of course the mentors and coaches who make it possible for this club to exist.”