Peterborough-based Team Inconceivable is headed to UNH on Saturday for the New England FIRST Robotics Competition district event.

The team is part of the Monadnock Robotics Club of Hillsborough Country 4-H. Team Inconceivable recently competed at WPI in Worcester, Mass., with “Ellie, the Shrieking Eel,” their competition robot for 2025. All of the team’s robots are named for characters in “The Princess Bride.”

“We were chosen as alliance captains at our first competition this year, which was pretty impressive considering 30 teams go to each event and only eight get to be an alliance captain,” said team member Tre Patterson.

Team member Jacob Wyatt said the this year’s competition requirements were challenging, as teams were required to design a robot to manipulate two different game pieces through the competition course instead of one.

“This year the robot has to manipulate a large rubber ball and a PVC pipe. It’s totally different from last year,” Patterson said.

Competition rules this year also required that each robot have an collapsible elevator arm capable of extending 6 feet in the air.

“We wanted to do that all in one subsystem; we wanted to make it lighter, more robust. We’ve gone through many different designs,” Patterson said.

“We really wanted everything to be clean and organized this year,” Jacob said at practice on March 15. “We learned a lot from our first competition. We didn’t have enough testing time to find all the problems and bugs – that’s why we’re allocating all of next week to just test and practice, and we’re building on what we have learned from competition so far.”

Team Inconceivable is mostly a freshman team, aside from senior Kade Fletcher, who has led the team to competition wins since middle school.

“This is my first time doing robots, and I have been loving it,” Tre said. ““We had some problems programming the robot in our first competitions. We ran into a lot of programming hurdles, but we think we have that figured out.”

Tre said initially, the robotic arm “went crazy and broke stuff” before the team figured out the programming bugs, and that the team’s new mentor, Mike Armisault, has been a “huge help” with programming.

“We all learn from one another and help one another out,” said Roland Wildes, another mentor and team sponsor.

The team members all say the ability to 3-D print parts for “Ellie” at their practice space has been a huge advantage in building this year’s robot. The team has designed and printed their own gears, caps and other parts as needed.

“Being able to print something and not having to worry about bolting it together or ordering it from somewhere else has been key,” said Jacob. “It is really useful to be able to do that. This year we are really going for quality.”

The team also incorporated flexible wire covers this year, which prevent wires from being pulled or disturbed in competition.

“This is our first year using wire covers so the wires don’t snag on anything. Sometimes they get hit by other robots, even though it is a penalty if another robot grabs your wires,” Tre said. “Mostly the problem was our own the robotic arm was snagging on the wires.”

Team Inconceivable recently had to find a new home after the MAXT Makerspace, where they previously practiced, moved from Vose Farm Road to the Noone Falls Mill in February.

When the owners of the old Folkway building, Ray and Beth Cote, heard that Team Inconceivable needed a practice space, they offered up the empty building to the team for a year.

Team coach Andres Wood said moving the team’s equipment and technology was “quite a process.”

“We’re so grateful to be in this space, and it’s been wonderful,” Wood said.

Team Inconceivable is always looking for middle- and high school-age students who are interested in robotics. For information about the team, go to www.team1729.org.