“Engineers of Russia’s Future” attendees’ results at the robotics championship worthy of praise

“Engineers of Russia’s Future” school affiliated to the department of “Computer Technology in Machine Engineering” (hereafter referred to as CTME) of the Institute of Metallurgy, Machine Engineering and Transport offers a unique opportunity to high schoolers to study prototyping, engineering modeling, software engineering and show good results in developing their own projects. In February the school team came out on top at the robotics FTC Russia Open 2017 championship and earned the right to represent Russia at the world and European championships FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)that were held in the spring.

The team’s goal was to build and program a robot with the simple motion planning algorithm, they also had to keep an engineering log containing the description of the building and programming process in English. Before the beginning of each competition the team members faced the jury to answer their questions about the project, strategy and team work and to undergo several motion control checkups to assess almost 100 parameters for their conformance to specifications.

The principal of rivalry between alliances lies at the core of the competitions. Each alliance is made up of two teams. Scores earned by an alliance for each match go to both teams. So the allied teams spend time together training before the match, discussing cooperation, fixing technical defects. While still in the eliminating standings, alliances are formed randomly and each team gets a new ally after each elimination. In the finals the highest-ranking teams are free to choose their own allies and once the alliances are formed they remain the same until the end of the competition. So the leading teams must keep a record of other teams’ results to claim the strongest ally in the finals. By this way participants from different countries get to know each other and learn to succeed together.

So the CTME team took part in the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship that was held in American St. Luis. There had been 800 contenders from all over the world competing for a place in the finals. After nine eliminations our students took 105th position out of 256 teams in the overall rankings. Still “KTM” team was chosen as an ally for the final stage of the championship along with other 23 teams. The team made it into quarterfinal.

The team was also successful at the FTC Dutch Open 2017 European Robotics Championship that was held in Eindhoven (the Netherlands). This largescale event brought together almost 50 school teams from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Having made it through all five eliminations, our guys came fifth in the overall rankings and guaranteed a place in the finals. It was the first time that “KTM” was the captain of the alliance taking advantage of their privileged position to choose the allies. As a result the alliance of the “KTM”, St. Petersburg Lyceum No 244 and the Israeli team made it into the semifinals of the European Championship.