Andover, MA – Lenox High School’s Robotics Team, Enginuity, made up of eight students and two faculty mentors, set off Saturday morning at 5:15 am for the long drive to Andover High School to take part in a qualifying tournament for the FIRST® Tech Challenge International Robotics Competition.

Founded by Dean Kamen in 1989, the mission of FIRST® is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators. FIRST® Tech Challenge teams design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format.

Saturday’s competition consisted of 29 rounds where random alliances of two teams each worked cooperatively against opposing alliances to get their robots to complete a variety of tasks within three minutes. For the first part of each round, the robots had to act autonomously to try and place plastic cones atop different sized obstacles, and then maneuver to a randomly selected destination. In next segment of each round, human drivers took control of the robots in a race to collect points by picking up and placing cones and performing various other tasks on the playing field.

Facing off against 18 other teams from around the state, Enginuity’s robot got off to a rocky start. In one of their 6 rounds, a faulty power switch caused the robot to shut off unexpectedly, and in another, the robot’s gripper arm got stuck halfway down so it couldn’t pick up the cones off the ground. But the team worked furiously between rounds to iron out the problems and soon set a record high score that wasn’t matched until the very end of the day.

Unfortunately, despite all their hard work, at the end of the qualifying rounds Enginuity was ranked in 8^th place, and the team was resigned to merely watching the finals. For the finals, the top four teams each got to choose another team to form their alliance, and in a surprise move, the 4^th ranked team, Liquid Oxygen, from Needham, MA, picked Enginuity to join them.

The semi-finals were best 2 out of three, and in two fast and decisive matches, Liquid Oxygen and Enginuity soundly defeated their opposing alliance from Foxboro and Worcester. Two quick matches later, against teams from Acton and Andover, and teams Liquid Oxygen and Enginuity were the champions of the entire competition.

In addition to winning the competition, Team Enginuity was awarded the Design Award for best incorporating industrial design elements into their robot that are both functional and aesthetic.

On Saturday, February 18, Team Enginuity will be heading to Canton, MA to battle their way through another qualifying tournament on the road to the state championship.