Team 10464 The Bionic Tigers at the KY State FTC Championship
Loveland, Ohio – Loveland FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Teams 10464, The Bionic Tigers, and 5040, Nuts & Bolts, competed in the Ohio FTC Championship on March 5. The event, which was held remotely, included presentations to a panel of judges where teams had the opportunity to share the design and development of their robot, their outreach efforts to support STEM and robotics in their community, and their involvement with industry professionals. Teams also submitted scores for 6 robot matches, that were completed on their home fields, trying to score the maximum points possible in two and a half minute matches.
Based on their judging and robot performance, Team 5040, Nuts & Bolts, won the Motivate Award and 2nd place robot performance. The Motivate Award recognizes a team that makes a collective effort to make their team known throughout their community and school. Team 10464 won 4th place robot performance and the Think Award, which is the 2nd highest award for the event. The Think Award is given to the team whose Engineering Portfolio best reflects the team’s journey through the design and build process for their robot.
Team 10464 The Bionic Tigers also competed on March 12 at the Kentucky FTC State Championship at Murray St. University. This competition was their first in-person competition in 2 years due to Covid restrictions, and the event included teams from Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
At the start of the day, the Bionic Tigers and all competing teams presented to panels of judges for evaluation for awards. Teams also submitted a 15-page engineering portfolio summarizing all of their robot design and development, outreach work with other teams and the community, and connections with the professional STEM community. Following judging, they competed in 6 rounds of qualifying matches and were ranked 3rd in a very competitive field. The top 4 ranked teams became the alliance captains for the elimination rounds, and the Bionic Tigers selected two Kentucky teams as alliance partners. They lost a close match in the semi-finals, and the 1st seed alliance went on to win the robot portion of the competition.
To close out the exciting day, in the awards ceremony the Bionic Tigers won the top award of the event, the Inspire Award. This award recognizes the best all-around team that has shown success in designing and building a competitive robot and shares their experiences, enthusiasm, knowledge with other teams, sponsors, their community, and the judges. The Bionic Tigers also won Promote Award for their video answering the prompt “If there was one thing I would tell my younger self about FIRST it would be…”.
As the Inspire Award winner, the Bionic Tigers have advanced to the FTC World Championship in Houston, TX from April 20-23.
Loveland FTC teams are supported by many generous sponsors including Loveland American Legion Post 256, Sugar Creek Foods, Procter & Gamble, Standex Electronics, CBT Company, Kinetic Vision, Harlow Law Office, and Jarvis Global Investments.
The Bionic Tigers are seeking additional sponsors to help cover the travel costs for the World Championship in Houston. Please contact [email protected] if you are interested in helping sponsor the trip.
Loveland Robotics Boosters will be hosting Breakfast with the Bots, a pancake Breakfast fundraiser, on Saturday, April 9. Tickets are available at www.lovelandroboticsboosters.org.