By Greg Mellen
In the soccer World Cup, there is usually one collection of particularly strong and talented teams that play each other early and are referred to as the “group of death.” In a robotics version of such a group, the Team 5199, the Robot Dolphins from Outer Space, ran into rough competition early this year at the FIRST World Robotics Championships in Houston.
After a “banner season” in which the Dolphins, representing the Capistrano Unified School District, won a record-tying two regional tournaments and the team’s highest ranking since 2019, the team was unable to quite reach that level of success in Houston.
The Robot Dolphins, with their new bot Trident, won blue banners as the top team in both the prestigious Los Angeles and Arizona regionals. The 2019 squad, and its then-robot, Kraken, were the breakthrough robot team for CUSD, setting a standard against which all future teams and bots will be measured.
The Dolphins were on track to win the Orange County Regionals in the kick-off event of the season until one of the robots in its three-team alliance broke down. In Houston, after struggling to a 6-4 record in its bracket, the Dolphins 5199 missed out on being chosen to advance to the finals.
“Our division was known to be one of the toughest divisions,” Richard Jung, coach and head mentor of the CUSD team, said of the Galileo Division, which featured California rivals and perennial powers Citrus Circuits from Davis and Code Orange of Irvine.
In FIRST robotics competitions, three-robot teams, called alliances, kick off with round-robin play. Three teams, plus an alternate, in each division advance to the finals bracket. The winning team in a division picks its alliance partners for the playoffs. This year, a team led by MadTown Robotics of Madera, High Tide of Ventura, and Ctrl Z of Champaign, Ill., captured the overall title.
The Dolphins kicked off the competition in high style as its teams jumped out to a 3-0 record, including scoring 188 points in the opener, which would be the highest total of the day in the division.
Jung also said the tall design elements of Trident ranked it as high as No. 2 internationally for its ability to load game pieces at the highest elevations in the game. The high-loading maneuvers score the highest number of points per attempt, but can be offset by speed and other scoring abilities. Going into Houston, the CUSD team was working to improve the machine’s intake mechanism, to allow it to improve its ground game and score more points quickly at lower elevations.
The Dolphins still finished in the top 16 percent of all teams. Earlier in the season, they have been as high as 9th in California, which fields the toughest competition in the world, including top teams in the last two world champion alliances. The Robot Dolphins end this portion of the season with a 42-14 overall record.
This year, 619 teams competed in the championships and 974 teams and 18,000 students were involved in the various competitions and exhibits in the four-day affair. This was the second year since the pandemic that live, in-person competition was held and Jung said the number of teams and quality of competition is growing.
This year, 25 CUSD team members attended the event, along with about 50 supporters, including alumni, mentors, family and friends.
“It’s getting back to where it was (before the pandemic,)” Jung said.
Although the World Championships concluded the official season sponsored by FIRST, a not-for-profit company that sponsors competitions and science and engineering education, the Robot Dolphins will continue to work on their bot and enter off-season competitions and exhibitions through the fall. These will include four or five tournaments, such as the Chezy Champs in San Jose, the toughest off-season competition in the world.
Robotics has become a premier program in the CUSD’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, from high school down through primary education. Robotics combines engineering, building, programming and strategy. The team is part of the College and Career Advantage program and draws students from across CUSD and the Laguna Beach district.
