The Byting Irish Robotics Team 7660 earned itself a place at the state competition with its second tournament victory in a row, at Ann Arbor’s Skyline High School on March 16-17.
Forty-two teams participated in the competition, and at the end of the playoff rounds, Team 7660’s alliance emerged victorious. Alliance #1 was captained by Team 4362: The Gems of Charyl Stockwell Academy, who chose Team 67: The HOT Team of Milford High School and The Byting Irish to join it in the playoffs. In the qualification rounds, Team 7660 went 11-5-1 (wins-losses-ties), and in the playoff rounds, Alliance #1 secured a 5-0-0 record, dominating the competition and bringing home the trophy.
To add to the day’s triumph, The Byting Irish also earned the Creativity Award for their design of a triple-intake system. The Creativity Award “celebrates creativity that enhances strategy of play and was intentionally designed and not discovered.” Team 7660 took a risk in adding this feature to their robot, but it paid off on the floor. The triple intake allows the robot to pick up pieces from three sides of the robot instead of just one, giving the robot more freedom and speed in game play. Electrical team member Yohannan Joel ’25 elaborated on the process: “Designing the triple intake and making it function was a really difficult thing because it was ambitious and required a lot of maneuvering and we had to figure out how exactly we were going to wire the robot. This was also our first year doing a swerve chassis which had a lot of its own problems, but we were able to tackle this and come out with a well driving robot.”
The team can certainly be proud of this year’s robot and its success! The Byting Irish will join other qualifying teams for the FIRST Robotics Michigan state championships, April 4-6 at Saginaw Valley State University.