Rutland robotics team awarded Medal of Honor for collaboration at Mass event

The Rutland Area Robotics’ FRC Team 2370- IBOTS, based at the Stafford Technical Center, traveled to a prestigious offseason event at Worcester Polytechnic Institute June 3-4,called BattleCry @ WPI ‘23. The event was attended by 64 teams from all over the Northeast, including some from as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio. The competition was fierce, the team reported.

The Rutland squad, Team 2370 – IBOTS, finished their run for the WPI BattleCry Victors title in third place on a four-team alliance including: Team 1073 “The Force” from Hollis, New Hampshire; Team 2423 “The KwarQs” from Watertown, Massachusetts; and Team 467  “The Colonials” from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. 

Their Alliance competed against 15 other four-team alliances, and was stopped in double elimination just one victory short of making the finals.

One of the most thrilling matches they’ve ever played was a playoff match which featured the IBOTS maneuvering a disabled partner’s robot onto a special scoring zone and then achieving balance with another partner on the teeter-totter-like charging station with only a single second remaining on the clock — for the win. 

As notably as they performed on the field of competition, the IBOTS brought their greatest glory to Rutland Area Robotics during the awards ceremony, where the IBOTS Team 2370 members were announced by the event judges as the recipients of the top judged Team Award, The WPI BattleCry’23 Medal of Honor. That award is the highest accolade given to a team by the judges at the event. The IBOTS were chose from the field of 64 — a field nearly double the size of a regular season event. It was awarded in recognition of their cooperative spirit, their enthusiastic contributions to the cooperative-competitive robotics culture, their diligence in precision engineering design and fabrication, and their promotion of STE(A)M Education in their local community of Rutland County.