Metal Moose Motors To Worlds

After the FIRST Robotics game was revealed on January 7, the Metal Moose robotics team got to work designing and constructing their robot. After many iterations and trials, they landed on their final designs. These systems combined to form “BAMI,” their robot for the 2023 FRC Season.

At their first competition in March, over thirty members of the team participated in a 3-day district qualifying competition. They were finalists (losing the tiebreaker in a close match), came home with two performance trophies, and qualified for the district championship. They won the Autonomous Award for the robot that best integrates environment sensing with robot performance through programming; the other award recognized their ascent to the finals.

On a weekend in early April, there was another 33-hour marathon event and the Metal Moose won the competition as well as the Excellence in Engineering Award for “design elegance and engineering robustness, performance, and full-machine integration.” They were ranked 8th in their district and 88th in the world among 3,297 teams. The intense work, focused collaboration, and iterative progress these students have taken this year now place the Metal Moose in the top 3% in the world.

By the end of the district championship, they had moved up to 7th in the district, 87th in the United States, and won the Quality Award which “celebrates machine robustness in concept, design and fabrication. Building the robot is only part of their success and the judges recognize them as a quality example to others.” This performance also qualified them for the FIRST [For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology] World Championships once again and they headed for Houston. After three exciting days, Team 1391 and their alliance partners made it into the semi-finals, where they performed well but ultimately did not qualify for the finals. Now back home,  finishing in the top 7% of all teams in the world, the team is meeting to review the year, identify systems for improvement, and set goals for next year, which include aspirations for another trip to the World Championship in 2024. Well, done, Metal Moose!

Check out the galleries of student photos from their competitions here!