Recharged Green Makes History
From left to right – Recharged Green with their alliance partners Mechanical Paradox Cubed and and BrainSTEM. (submitted photo)
by Ethan Doak
Recharged Green, a homeschool robotics team from Pella. Proved to be one of the best teams in the world last week, concluding their season in the FIRST Tech Challenge by becoming the first Iowa team in history to get to worlds finals matches at the FIRST World Championships.
They advanced to the Worlds Championships after 8 competitions, Including taking second in both robot competition and in awards and at the Iowa State Championships. They compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge (or FTC for short) it is a global STEM-focused challenge given to over 5,500 teams. They build a robot to complete a complex series of challenges. While the whole robot must fit in an eighteen-inch cube to start every two-minute match.
Throughout the 4 days of worlds, teams play matches which pit two random partners, against two opponents to see which “alliance” can score more points. This season points were scored by moving whiffle balls and small cubes out of a sectioned off “Crater”, and into the “Cargo Hold” of a small scale, space-themed landing ship.
Recharged ended day 3 ranked 14th out of 80 teams in their division. Where they went on to be selected to play as the highest-ranked alliance. Alongside three teams from across the states. Including: #8393 The Giant Diencephalic Brainstem Robotics team from Baden, Pennsylvania. #7182 Mechanical Paradox Cubed from Catonsville, Maryland. And #7236 Recharged Green from Pella, Iowa.
After this, they won semifinals, and then division finals. Beating out teams from 7 states and two countries. To win their division.
Their robot was constructed from custom aluminum and polycarbonate parts that were almost entirely designed before fabrication, using Computer Aided Design software. It weighed in at 38 pounds and was the second robot the team constructed this year. And was estimated at costing around two thousand dollars in total.
The team does all of their own fundraising, working with over 25 local businesses every year to help keep the team running financially.
After elimination matches, the team was also recognized by being one of just six finalists for the Control Award, a judged award that focuses on software integration in the robots.
This was the third year in a row that the team has advanced to the World Championships. In the past, they’ve brought home a Division semifinalists award and a nomination for the Think Award. As well as being a finalist for the Rockwell Aerospace Innovate Award.
