Wellesley students took first and second place in the team competition at the New England Regional Botball Tournament on Saturday April 12 at UMass Lowell. 23 high school teams from across New England competed.
Botball is a team-oriented robotics competition where teams design, build and program a pair of autonomous robots using a standardized kit of materials. The team of students must document their design and build process and then compete in a double elimination tournament that includes specific challenges, which are new to each year’s competition.
The Great Leap Forward, a team made up of Wellesley and Needham students Chris Chan, Quinn Collins, Lina Cui, Michelle Duan, Mira Kim, David Moy, Yutong Yang, Maggie Zhang, team captain Frank Zhou, and Kevin Zhu won first place overall, the judges award for innovation, the double elimination award and the seeding round award.
The Wellesley High School team, made up of Davis Foster, Jimmy Wang, Sam Westenberg and Teddy Williamson won second place overall.
Members of the Great Leap Forward team also plan to compete in the international botball tournament at the Global Conference on Educational Robotics (GCER) beginning on July 30th, which typically attracts teams from across the country as well as from nations such as Austria, Poland, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt.
(Thanks to Martha Collins for sending the info and photos.)
