A local robotics team, Code Orange, from Irvine recently traveled to Beijing, China over Thanksgiving break to participate in the World Adolescence Robotics Competition (WARC).

They got invited by an Australian robotics team to represent the United States because the two teams won their division together at championships together in St. Louis, MO.

A student at San Juan Hills High School, Chetana Piravi (12) has been a part of this team since freshman year but first started her interest in robotics in 6th grade. She is now the team captain of her team and was awarded with the prestigious Dean’s List Finalist award for her efforts in the program.

In FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), students are given six weeks to build and program, from scratch, a 120 lb robot that is designed around a specific challenge. Some years robots are throwing frisbees, some years robots are shooting basketballs, and some years robots are throwing and catching yoga balls. Even though each year the game is different, the engineering and life skills that students learn from year to year remain consistent.

Code Orange was the only American team competing in China. There was also a Canadian team, a British team, an Australian team, and about 20 Chinese teams.

The Chinese government hosted the competition, and they decided to play the 2013 FRC game. So in order to participate in this event the team had to rebuild their robot from 2013, which was a frisbee shooting robot.  

“It was really hard to rebuild the robot because the parts were scattered everywhere around the shop and we had a lot of work to do. It took us a little less than a month to finish the robot, and I’m so glad we did,” said Sukanya Prasad, member of Code Orange (12).

The team left for Beijing on the Friday before Thanksgiving break and when they got there the weather was about zero degrees.

“Every day we were wearing about five layers of clothing, and we were still cold. Coming from Southern California none of us were prepared for this weather,” said Piravi.

The competition went on for three days. The team was able to meet the president of First, many famous Chinese movie and pop stars, and the Vice Premier of China.

“It was amazing being able to meet all these famous people, even though we didn’t always know who exactly they were. Especially when we met the Vice Premier, it was really intense because she was surrounded by security and bodyguards but later we found out that she said she loved our robot.” said Piravi.

In the first two days of competition, teams are randomly paired up with other teams and play qualification matches. Based off the average qualification match scores, teams are ranked. Then, based on ranking, teams go through “alliance selection” where the top eight teams each pick two other teams they want to play with for elimination matches.

Code Orange was ranked first after the qualification matches, and selected two other Chinese teams to play with.

“Even though there were other international teams that we probably would have rather played with, we decided to play with the Chinese teams so that we could help them out and it would be more fun,” said Prasad.

After the elimination rounds, and an intense finals match against the alliance of Canadian and Chinese teams, Code Orange and their partners won the competition.

Piravi said, “I’m so glad I was able to go to China. Being apart of robotics has opened up so many doors for me but I would never have dreamed that it would one day lead me all the way to China.“