The NDA Robotics team #3057 “Girls Like Bots” competed in the 2015 FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) qualifier match at Milton High School on February 21^st for this year’s competition challenge, Cascade Effect. Teams around the nation compete on a playing field with a robot cleverly designed to perform a 30 second pre-programmed autonomous period. This is when the robot moves by itself, and a 2 minute driver-controlled period. Before the 2 minute and 30 second match, two randomly selected teams are paired together as an alliance to play a match against a second alliance. The objective for this year’s game was to collect both large and small plastic balls and to score them into rolling goal tubes of varying heights. Teams then push and defend their rolling goals and try to get points by placing them either in their parking zone or on their ramp. With a new team and new teacher, the NDA Robotics team worked with great determination to build a robot in a short time frame, and ultimately the girls came out on top when rising to the final round at the qualifier match. Team 3057 gave it their all as they succeeded onto the MA State Championship this past weekend.

“Although we did not get selected to advance to regionals, we did extremely well considering the amount of time we had and the difficulties we faced. We all have learned so much and we all had a fun and innovative experience; that is what really matters.” – Ellen Desjourdy

The NDA Robotics Team is looking for more girls to join them as they continue to engage in tasks that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities. No experience is necessary to join; you only need to bring an open mind and imagination. Keep calm and tinker on!