Photo Courtesy of junior Hudson Jones

  The VEX Robotics tournament on February 5 at Cal Poly was a success for SLOHS’ robotics teams.

  The SLOHS robotics club called SLOBotics divides into six teams to make six robots. Team 920C, consisting of seniors Sahil Gavandi and Christopher Jewell, qualified without losing a single qualifying round.

  “We spent about an entirety of two weeks building and many more while designing. We spent two hours every other day programming and coming up with strategies for the competition,” said Gavandi.

  Their second-to-top placement in qualifications let them partner with nearly any willing team, so they chose the highest-ranked team remaining: fellow SLOBotics team 920B. Both teams’ playstyles synergized, which showed great promise for the finals.

  They managed to barely win in the quarterfinals with a score of 140 to 136 but narrowly lost in the semifinals with a score of 106 to 111.

  A point difference smaller than six is typically nominal, but the intense scoring process led to marginal victories. Both games took a considerable amount of time to score because of a penalty rule within the last thirty seconds of each match.

  “The purpose of that rule is to enable teams to park on the bridge without any interference. They just so happened to write it in a way that can be exploited to work in your favor and cause another team to commit that rule unintentionally,” said Jewell.

  In both matches, the offending robot attempted to gain possession of a goal rather than disrupt balancing.

  Although no SLOBotics teams won the tournament itself, team 920B managed to win a spot at a state tournament. They have to be conscious of their aggression if they wish to win in the future.

  “We’re working on it as much as we can. Whenever we get the chance for work, we make it the best possible,” said Jewell.