Fitch Robotics Team Battles For Top Spot In Exciting, Heartbreaking Competition

This article was contributed by Brian Chidley, head coach of the Aluminum Falcons.

The Fitch Robotics Team, the Aluminum Falcons, had an exciting and heartbreaking competition in Hartford last weekend.

After a day and a half of qualification rounds, the Aluminum Falcons found themselves as the No. 1 individual team among 64 Robotics teams from across the country.

  The Northeast Utilities Connecticut Regional FIRST Robotics Competition was considered by many to be one of the toughest fields out of more than 40 such regional events.

It was so competitive that one of the nation’s outstanding teams, the Robonauts, a NASA-sponsored team from Houston, chose it just because it would be the most challenging.

On Saturday afternoon, the top 8 alliances moved on to elimination rounds. The Aluminum Falcons, as the number 1 seeded team, got the first pick of all other teams to form their 3-team alliance, and they chose the No. 2 team, the Robonauts, the third team on this powerful alliance was Shaker Robotics from Latham, New York.

The No. 1 alliance moved easily through the quarterfinals and first game of the semis, scoring continuously higher each time.

Then the unexpected happened: the Robonauts died on the field. For the second, and third game in the best-of-3 semifinals, the Robonauts did not move.

The Aluminum Falcons nearly pulled off a single-handed win in the second game, but fell 4 points short at the buzzer. The tie-breaking third game sealed the fate, and the Falcons, the best individual team in Hartford, had to go home empty-handed.