Mihir Kotbagi

Team 1072’s technical president Chiling Han (11) runs code on the robot at the competition’s practice field. Despite multiple rounds of bug fixes, the robot’s autonomous routine failed to run properly.

Harker Robotics competed at the 2024 Sacramento Regional hosted at Pleasant Grove High School from March 13 to 16, making a comeback run to the finals alongside alliance partners Citrus Circuits, Berkelium and Rambots before losing to the eventual winners The Cheesy Poofs, Quixilver and Iron Patriots.

The competition brought together 38 teams from across the world, with participants representing both China and Taiwan in addition to America. In this year’s challenge, dubbed “Crescendo,” each alliance of three teams was tasked with shooting rings into a speaker element to score, slotting them into an amplifier to speed up scoring and mounting a metal chain at the end in order to gain extra points.

In the first two days of the event, Harker Robotics faced mechanical and software faults that led to the team falling to last place in the qualifying rounds. A fortunate selection by the second-seeded alliance combined with Harker Robotics’ overhaul of the robot’s intake and indexer resulted in a stronger showing in playoffs and a second-place finish overall.

Computer science department chair and robotics team administrator Dr. Eric Nelson managed bookings and payments for the Sacramento Regional. He was surprised by the sudden resurgence of Team 1072 after their shaky start. 

“The team came in knowing that there were some hardware issues, but they passed the bench level testing that they’ve been doing in some of the early field testing,” Dr. Nelson said. “By the end of the qualification rounds, which occur all day Friday and Saturday up until noon, we were tied for dead last. Saturday evening, we walked away as an award-winning finalist.”

The alliance, composed of Citrus Circuits from Davis Senior High School, Berkeley High School’s Berkelium, Harker Robotics and backup team Rambots from California Crosspoint Academy, cruised through the quarterfinals and semifinals of the event without a single loss. However, the first-seeded alliance ultimately secured victory by taking down Harker’s alliance 120-114 and 114-80 in consecutive matches.

Software lead Eddie Zhang (10) praised the operation subteams of Harker Robotics for their excellent scouting and networking with other teams, especially Citrus Circuits. 

“Our outreach and pitches to other teams greatly improved our standing because we were unable to reach our full potential during the qualification matches,” Eddie said. “This meant that we had a higher chance of being picked because we explained what we could actually do with our robot, which led to Team 1678 considering us as a second pick robot. Not only were we able to score, we were also able to play effective defense against other teams.”

The judges additionally recognized Team 1072’s outreach initiatives, awarding them the Gracious Professionalism award in honor of their exemplary adherence to the FIRST core values of discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork and fun through actions both on and off the playing field.

Harker Robotics also worked to prepare for the next competition, which took place at Seaside High School in Monterey from March 27 to 30. Operations President Tiffany Gu (10) was excited to see the robot’s new performance with fixes to its systems.

“We have spent a lot of time revamping our robot, and I am anticipating that our robot will do much better,” Tiffany said. “We have upgraded our autonomous program and implemented various corrections to fix our mistakes from the Sacramento Regional like ensuring the hand off from our intake to indexer to shooter is flawless.”