P.K. Yonge Steel Eels robotics team advances to Florida Championships

Press release from P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Steel Eels robotics team #18317, from P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, has qualified for the FIRST Tech Challenge Florida Championships. The event will be held at the AdventHealth Fieldhouse and Conference Center in Winter Haven on March 6-7. 

The Steel Eels are one of 60 teams that will compete at the event, with nine teams advancing to the FIRST Championship being held in Houston, also known as the world championship, and 13 teams advancing to other premier events around the country. The Steel Eels team is made up of 8^th– through 12^th-graders, some of whom have competed with the team in past years. This season, the Steel Eels competed in the Northeast Florida region, which had 38 teams. The Eels are one of eight teams advancing from the region. In addition to an impressive robotics competition, the team won the Connect Award at the regional competition, which is given to the team with the most impressive and diverse outreach. 

This year the First Tech Challenge game is “Decode.” The challenge consists of the robot picking up purple or green balls, called artifacts, and firing them into a capture pylon, called a classifier. Before each round a coded pattern is given, and extra points are earned if the team scores the colored artifacts in that pattern. The robotics challenge consists of a period where the robot runs autonomously as well as a portion where the robot is controlled by a driver. In addition to the robotics portion, teams must present a portfolio of their season, which includes robot design, outlines of their creative process, and outreach opportunities the team participated in.

FIRST is one of the largest K-12 robotics programs in the state of Florida, with more than 250 teams participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge alone. The Steel Eels are the only FIRST Tech Challenge team in Alachua County.

You can help support the team and donate to a GoFundMe that has been created to help raise funds for their trip at http://gofund.me/2536b16e5.