Alya Mehrtash staff writer
The MorTorq FRC 1515 robotics team won one award at the FIRST Los Angeles Regional Robotics Competition on March 7 and 8, but failed to qualify for the FIRST World Championship.
With a final record of four wins and six losses, MorTorq was ranked as 27th overall out of 44 teams. They also walked away from the competition with the Gracious Professionalism Award, which the team’s safety captain sophomore Ella Cox called “an incredibly important award for FIRST.”
The award, according to FIRST Robotics, “celebrates outstanding demonstration of FIRST Core Values such as continuous Gracious Professionalism and working together both on and off the playing field.” MorTorq President of Business senior Eva Danesh was very happy to receive the award, and felt that it was a “fitting” accolade for MorTorq.
“Our team has worked [throughout] the year to create fluidity between our three subdivisions of build, programming and business,” she said. “We were thrilled to be recognized with this award and I feel as though it will only encourage us to be stronger team members.”
Despite losing most of their matches, Cox felt “very proud of our performance and confident for our next competition.” She found that the robot’s driver train, intake and “unique” magazine were very beneficial to their performance during matches, and were also helpful in balancing the difficulties they faced with their robot’s “inconsistent climber.”
Aside from the “amazing feeling” of watching their robot, which MorTorq “worked so hard to design and build,” Danesh also enjoyed meeting other robotics students competing at the competition. Teams in attendance came from all over the world, including some from Chile, Mexico, France, Brazil and Turkey.
“To meet other robotics teams from around the globe and speak to them about their robot and their outreach events is really fun because we get to see how different teams interpreted the challenge, and to share and receive ideas to more effectively spread STEM in our community,” Danesh said.
Members of MorTorq are now looking ahead to the FIRST Ventura Regionals, where they will compete against 39 other schools in another opportunity to qualify for worlds, from March 19 to March 22.
Click here, or interact with the images below to explore the MorTorq robot and its different parts.