Patronum Bots advance to state championship
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
The all-girl robotics team from East Troy – the Patronum Bots – earned an invite to the FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship Feb. 6-7 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Patronum Bots are: Caitlin Hunter, Brianna Fridley, Rachel Hunter, Emerson Dignan and Lauren Hunter.
The team competed and hosted the FTC season kick of Jan. 3 at the Milwaukee School of Engineering to advance to the state tournament. The girls also brought home the Inspire Award and the Winning Alliance Captain Award.
“The Inspire Award is for excellence in robot design and teamwork, and is given to the team that truly embodies the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program,” coach Meg Hunter said.
The team’s outreach program FIRST Ladies was one of the reasons the girls won the Inspire Award.
“FIRST Ladies is a community of girls and women involved in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics programs,” Hunter said. “This group was created to provide a place for girls on teams around the world to make connections and get support.”
The girls were recognized for their well-documented design and engineering process, which was detailed in the team’s engineering notebook. The judges also took note of the team’s unique robot design that incorporated more than 60 percent custom designed parts and included parts designed on CAD and printed on the team’s 3D printer.
“Our robot was very competitive all day and our autonomous (hands-free) mode was the most effective of all robots,” coach Shawn Hunter wrote in the team’s newsletter. “This gave us a huge advantage at the start of each match. Also, our team was part of an alliance that had the highest match score of the day with 370 points (average score for the day was 140).”
The Patronum Bots went 6-0 for the day and ranked No. 1 out of 23 teams. The team won both rounds of the elimination challenge and earned the Winning Alliance Captain award.
The team travels to Lincoln, Neb., Jan 31 for its next competition.
For more information, visit www.patronumbots.com.
