The Palo Alto High School robotics team placed 44th out of 45 teams at the Central Valley Regional robotics competition last weekend in Madera, Calif., where the teams’ robot made its debut, according to robotics co-captain Freddy Kellison-Linn.

The team ran into an issue with the bumper early on in the competition.

“We ran into a problem right at the beginning that we had to spend awhile fixing which meant that we couldn’t go to our practice competitions,” Kellison-Linn said. “It was a problem with the regulations. Every robot has to have a bumper to protect sharp edges and things. … We had mounted ours too low but when we lifted it up it caused a bunch of problems with the other mechanisms of the robot.”

Still, the team was able to resolve the issue and had a functioning robot for the final matches.

“We got the things that we needed to get working working and so by the end of the competition we were able to play in the matches and score points,” Kellison-Linn said.

Kellison-Linn noted that this was an improvement from last years’ competition.

“[We were in a] much better state than the state we were in last year,” Kellison-Linn said.

Overall, the low ranking did not come as a surprise to Kellison-Linn in light of the issues with the bumper.

“We didn’t do super well,” Kellison-Linn said. “We didn’t have a very high-scoring robot for the beginning so it was sort of expected.”

Kellison-Linn said he anticipates better performances at future competitions.

“We’re looking forward to our next competition so that we can actually do well this time,” Kellison-Linn said.

The next competition will be the Silicon Valley Regional from April 3 to 5 in San Jose.