Team named Grand Champions at state robotics competition

A team of Fox Chapel Area High School students was named the overall grand champion in the Pennsylvania BotsIQ 2024 Finals Competition. The combat robotics program team swept the awards ceremony with accolades for “The Coolest Bot” based on both public and peer voting, “Best Engineered Bot” based on the judging and interview from a panel of professional engineers, and “Best Engineering Documentation” for the team’s 200-page research and documentation of the design process. The team also had a fifth-place finish. All of these scores combined earned the Fox Chapel Area High School team the overall grand champion status.

The team members are seniors Ava McCaffrey, Eduardo Phelan-Vidal, Aiden Purcell and Lucy Rygelski; juniors Jackson Hagler, Riley Puklus, Graeson Santucci and Keegan Scanlon; sophomores Jackson Biehl, Krisztian Salvador, Benjamin Sun and Jacob Williams; and freshmen Eric Jiang, Mikhail Lukichev, Ayush Patel, Mateo Phelan-Vidal and Georgy Pistsov.

According to Fox Chapel Area High School technology education teacher and sponsor Ryan Siniawski, “The team’s success in all aspects of the competition can be directly attributed to their attention to detail, dedication, and hard work over the course of the year. We also owe a great deal of gratitude to our industry sponsor, Aerotech, for their generous donations of material, precision machining, and expert guidance.”

A total of 67 teams from 45 schools participated in the state BotsIQ combat robotics program finals. The competition was held April 26 and 27 at PennWest California. The team next competes in the ‘Burgh Bash 2024 – BotsIQ National Invitational May 17 and 18.