M-SET fish swim their way to world competition in St. Louis

 

Like every other team there, they had spent the past six weeks constructing a robot that would stack plastic packing totes to play this year’s game. 

“It was an amazing experience getting this far in the competition and learning how we can improve from some of the best teams in the world,” junior team president Naveed Riaziat said. 

According to sophomore officer Nicole Lin, the team was overjoyed to qualify for the world competition this year. The last time the team qualified was 2010. 

The championship had eight divisions with 75 teams in each division. Inside each division, the top eight teams, after qualification matches, create an alliance of four robots, and these alliances play against each other until a winner is determined. The winning alliance of each division then face off against each other until a world champion is determined. 

After playing through their qualification matches, the M-SET Fish was chosen to be part of second seed alliance (the alliance partners for the second place team) in the Curie division, named after the famous scientist Marie Curie. 

"It was a great feeling to actually get picked," junior hardware lead Navid Mokhlesi said. “It was a great alliance and we are proud [to] have been a part of it. 

In St. Louis, the team played 10 qualification matches in their division before moving onto quarterfinals. In quarterfinals the four alliances with the highest average score over two games move on to semifinals. As the competition went forward, the team was not able to get a high enough average score to move on to the semi-finals.

“Making it so far in robotics really gratifies the work we have been doing,” Riaziat said. “It has been a joy and pleasure to join this big event, but we will still try to improve to become even better.” 

The world champions who won the entire event was comprised of three California teams and one Texas team. The alliance was made of team 1678, Citrus Circuits from Davis; team 118, Robonauts from Houston; team 1671, Buchanan Bird Brains from Madera; and team 5012; Gryffingear from Palmdale. 

Lin said the competition also provided members an opportunity to interact with representatives from major global companies and top universities like MIT. 

"This has been one of the best experiences for everyone on the team,” Lin said. “We want to strive to achieve this result every year.”