Young Ferndale Robotics Team Makes Quarterfinals of FIRST Competition

DETROIT – Ferndale’s IMPI robotics team went into its first competition this year with mostly new faces, so its performance in the FIRST Robotics Detroit District Competition at Wayne State University pleased team mentor Cherie Drukas.

 “I think the students did an outstanding job, particularly since all of our students are new except for two,” Drukas said. “Our goal is always to qualify and we did.”

 With 18 out of 20 new members, IMPI was one of the 24 teams that made it into the quarterfinals of the competition, which took place Friday and Saturday. After 11 qualifying rounds prior to quarterfinals, IMPI was positioned at seed 11 out of 39 teams with seven wins and four losses.

 Additionally, IMPI Robotics received the Entrepreneurship Award, which celebrated the team’s comprehensive business plans.

 The competition featured a game known as Logo Motion. For each qualifying round, robots were matched up three to a team or “alliance” and competed against another alliance. Points were scored when robots picked up inflatable tubes with their robotic arms and placed them on raised pegs.

Tubes were in the shapes of triangles, circles and squares — what the FIRST logo is made of — and teams were awarded points according to how many logos they could create. Teams were also given the chance to score points at the end of each round by racing a minibot up a pole.

“I think we had good maneuverability and I think they did a good job of deploying the minibot,” Drukas said.

She noted that there were a few tweaks that needed to be made, but nothing major. Freshman team member Sophia Davidson said some of the tweaks were made to replace dead batteries, fix wrong wires and correct the robot’s arm being stuck.

“I think we’ve done really good, since the beginning we’ve gotten better,” Davidson said. “We had a few problems in the beginning but now with each match we’re getting our minibot up and scoring more points.”

IMPI’s next competition is in Ann Arbor on March 25. Drukas said the team members are already thinking about all they would like to do between now and then and seem to have a good handle on the changes that need to be made.

This weekend was just the beginning for their young team, Drukas said, to let them learn the ropes and see what other strategies are out there.