Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Hewlett High School’s robotics team, Innovo, has been asked to compete at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) International Premier Invitational in the Canadian Rockies.
Innovo joins Hewlett’s all-female team, Bionica for the opportunity to compete at the Edmonton Expo Center in Edmonton, Alberta, July 25 to 27.
The students will not only showcase their robotics skills and attend workshops, along with being at KDays, one of the largest festivals in Alberta. They will experience fireworks, rides and shows.
Initially, Innovo did not qualify to attend Premier, as they were just one standing away after regionals. The team took home the Think Award at regionals.
“At regionals they fell just one spot short of being selected, they were the next ones one the list of rankings,” Daniel Duffey-Birkenstock, coach said. “But, apparently one of the teams that was selected for the Premier competition is unable to attend. They extended the invitation to us, because Innovo was one step below on the roster.”
The 15-member team thought their season was over after regionals, but now they are reinvigorated and already working on updates for their robot.
“They had originally started their project for next year, once they found out this news they were immediately in the workshop coding and making adjustments right away,” Birkenstock added. “It’s as if they’ve been planning this all along, it was a little bit stunning to see them adapt so quickly.”
The teams will be competing in the Into the Deep category where they use STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and collaboration skills to explore life beneath the surface of the ocean.
Innovo has been testing out autonomous coding — coding that doesn’t require drivers and they have spent multiple days troubleshooting, programming and improving the robot as best they can.
Captain and senior Armani Tetsoti has been with Innovo since his sophomore year. Tetsoti said he joined because he was passionate about robotics.
“At times it is stressful to be captain, especially right before the competition when we are changing everything but overall it’s been a good time to be with my friends and get to work together,” Tetsoti said.
He said that regionals was the most stressful experience he has been in and that Innovo was unlucky in the draws for the driving portion.
“Even though we were doing pretty well and made it to the bracket finals, when they announced the awards our overall presentation was really good and we took home first place in the Think Award,” he said.
Tetsoti said he is most looking forward to spend more time with his friends. Being a, senior he’ll have this one more chance as a final send-off.
“We’ve been working on a few ideas to upgrade our robot because we know our performance can be better,” Tetsoti said. “The work we’re going to be doing is practicing more and working on the robot to earn more points next time. Without every single person on the team, this wouldn’t be possible.”
