Students in Deanna Ocampo’s Principles of Engineering classes at Kennedy High School competed in an after-school robosoccer tournament.

The friendly competition was a supplemental activity to the course curriculum.

First, teams had to work together to build and code a VEX robot to perform a 15-second autonomous task — put a ball into a goal. After gaining point in the autonomous round, teams moved on in bracket formation to compete in 2-vs-2 soccer matches with a driver-controlled robot.

“Once the robot enters the goal the other robots are not allowed to enter and the robot must exit the goal and leave the ball at rest there in order for the goal to count,” Ocampo explained. “This is to eliminate a goal that just rolls past by accident. The robots must also keep the ball on the ground when travelling, so they can't just pick it up and hold onto it. There was one claw bot that had their claw a little raised, so when they grabbed the ball the bottom of the ball stayed in contact with the ground.”

The robots performed tasks inside a walled arena that is part of the Kennedy Robotics program.

This is the second year Ocampo hosted the activity, however, this year there are now two classes of students, making the pool a bit wider.

“We kept the rules the same, but I was able to use tournament manager software which is the same software used at robotics competitions since I know how to set it up now,” she added.

Senior Massimo Marino manned the scoring while Gavin Chen served as referee.

The winners were team 7: Paula Pastor, Ariana Kahn and Taylor Conroy and team 2; Jack Sarosy and Michael Tomasello and Jacob Lancer.

Date Added: 10/14/2022