Lester Smith
Aces High team member Stephanie Devita explains the workings of the FIRST Robotics team’s 2017 robot to Senator Richard Blumenthal. They were in the pits area of the Suffield Shakedown, a season-opening scrimmage hosted at Suffield High School by Aces High. Close at the rear are mentor Bob Lowell and team member Pranav Saravanan.
In recent years, the increasing demands of each year’s game have left some teams unable to be totally ready for the Suffield Shakedown, the early scrimmage traditionally hosted by the combined Suffield-Windsor Locks team, Aces High. On February 18 this year, only 28 of the 32 teams registered showed up, and Aces High’s robot was late.
It looked unusually neat and technologically advanced. Two of its three manipulator functions were installed, but not the ability to hoist itself off the ground at the end of a match for extra points. Electronic systems problems persisted for another two hours. But the robot finally came out for two matches and showed its spirit in the final, dashing around collecting nerf ball “fuel” for the “boiler,” and hanging “gears” on a storage peg.