Citrus Circuits just keeps winning

Citrus Circuits continues its winning ways.

The Davis high school robotics team kicked off its 15th season earlier this month with a victory at the Central Valley Regional competition in Fresno, thereby ensuring yet another trip to the FIRST Robotics world championships in April — a championship the team won in 2015.

In addition to taking first place with two alliance partners in Fresno, Citrus Circuits also won the prestigious chairman’s award for outstanding outreach and education programs that spread STEM in the community.

This marked the second straight year Citrus Circuits took home the chairman’s award, recognized this year for numerous outreach programs in Davis, including Davis Youth Robotics, a Farmers Market booth, elementary school robotics classes, summer RoboCamps and even a Shelter Finder app used to help find beds for homeless individuals.

Citrus Circuits also participates in Compass Alliance, a group of robotics teams from around the world that help support younger teams, and provides assistance to other teams during competitions via the Citrus Service program.

The team does all of this while consistently winning on the field as well.

Last year the team placed third at the world championships — a competition featuring more than 400 high school teams from all over the world. The year before, the team came within a match of winning its second world title in three years.

With last weekend’s victory in Fresno, Citrus Circuits qualified for a ninth straight trip to the world championships.

Davis residents will have a chance to see the team in action beginning Friday when Citrus Circuits competes in the Sacramento Regional at the UC Davis ARC Pavilion — a competition Citrus Circuits has won repeatedly. Competition takes place Friday and Saturday and admission is free.

This year’s FIRST Robotics game is “DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE Presented By Boeing.”

Teams from all over the world built robots over the course of six weeks in January and February to play the game. Citrus Circuits team members built their robot in the expansive robotics classrooms at Davis High School before hitting the road earlier this month for the first of what will be several competitions held prior to the world championships.

At each competition, teams play in alliances of three, operating their robots on a large field in an effort to earn the most points.

For the first 15 seconds of each match, shutters are lowered to prevent student drivers from seeing the field. During this period, each team can choose to either use an autonomous routine or manually drive the robot using a vision system. After those first 15 seconds, drivers take control of their robots.

Teams load cargo (rubber playground balls) into two rockets and a cargo ship while placing hatch panels (flat disks) on both rockets to earn points. At the end of the game, robots attempt to climb a series of raised platforms to earn extra points.

The Citrus Circuits robot places a hatch panel on the third level of the rocket during last weekend’s FIRST Robotics competition in Fresno — a completion the Davis team won. Courtesy photo

During the Fresno competition last weekend, Citrus Circuits became the first team in the world to perform a successful “buddy climb,” lifting two other robots onto the raised platform during the final seconds of the match.

During the same competition, the eight members of the Citrus Service team helped 29 other teams pass inspection and get ready to play, doing everything from building bumpers for their robots to fixing code and mechanical problems. Started in 2017, Citrus Service has helped over 100 teams at both regional competitions and the FIRST world championship.

Citrus Circuits team members are all in grades 9-12 and hail from all of the high schools and junior highs in Davis. They are mentored by a team of former members, parents and other community members, with Davis High math teacher Steve Harvey serving as head coach (as he has for all 15 years of the team’s existence).

Major sponsors include the Davis Joint Unified School District, UC Davis, Technip FMC Schilling Robotics, Hill Engineering and Lockheed Martin. For more information about the team and its history, visit www.citruscircuits.org.

For information about the Sacramento Regional competition at UC Davis next weekend, visit http://cafirst.org/event/sacramento-regional/.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy.

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