Education

Goose Creek High’s Binary Botz Go to the World Championship

by The Berkeley Observer

IMG_1353GOOSE CREEK, S.C.–The Goose Creek High School Binary Botz VEX Robotics team competed at the VEX World Robotics Championship in Louisville, Kentucky last week. The team earned an 8-2 record and a 9th place finish in the Engineering Division, which consisted of 100 teams.

The team qualified for the division finals, but lost in the quarterfinals to the top ranked alliance by a score of two matches to one. Five-hundred teams from 38 countries competed in the competition.

Less than 8 percent of all teams qualify for this prestigious event. The Binary Botz were the only team from South Carolina to qualify for the division final playoff rounds.

The team began designing and researching their robot on August 23, 2016, and worked tirelessly after school and sacrificed many weekends. The Binary Botz won the South Carolina VEX Championship on March 12, besting 51 other teams from around the state. This win qualified them for the World Championship.

The team also traveled to Council Bluffs, Iowa, for the U.S. Open National Championship, where the team finished 22nd out of 100 teams, and qualified for the division final, though they were eliminated in the quarterfinal rounds. In addition, the team earned an Excellence Award at the Bluffton High School VEX Tournament.

IMG_1369Team Captain Ken Aliento, Co-Captain John Ona, and Programmer Hunter Tillman, lead the Binary Botz. Other members of the team are Sergio Bugarin, Josh Calvert, Mark Quek, Joseph Morton and Adrian Martell. The coaches consist of Project Lead the Way Engineering teachers Geoff Sklar and Sara Smith.

This is the 3rd year students have had the opportunity to participate in the robotics at Goose Creek High School, and the first time they have qualified for National or World tournaments. The competition game for this year, Nothing but Net, challenged the teams to shoot foam balls into a high net or low bin and try to lift their alliance robot 12 inches off the ground to earn maximum bonus points on a 12 foot by 12 foot field.

The game consisted of a 15-second autonomous period and a one minute and 45 second driver controlled period. By the season’s end the Binary Botz were able to successfully make four shots during autonomous period and 90 percent accuracy during the driver controlled portion of the match. The team average over 200 points per match during the world championships.

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