The Robotics Club took part in a league match on Feb. 11.  Junior Liam Stewart and computer science teacher TJ Slade discuss the competition and what it takes to compete. 

For the club, this league match was a culmination of the robotics season. 

“We have about three to four meets, but we have one league meet,” Stewart said. “[Meets] give us certain points that go to our season points, and then we’ll have a league match where the points that we accumulate over the year to rank us and put us in our different seeds.” 

With practices from 3 to 6 p.m. every day, the Robotics Club prepared diligently in order to secure a spot at State, and with the competitions requiring both pre-programmed and controlled robotics, there was a lot to do. 

“[Robotics] provides a place for students that maybe don’t have a place to go after school — a place to feel welcomed while also exploring topics in STEM,” Slade said. “Right now we have three groups — one working on building, one working on programming and then our last group working on our portfolio.” 

The engineering portfolio is another way for the robotics students to show off their chops at the league match. The portfolio and the robotics are judged separately so teams can advance based on their portfolio alone. 

“[The] majority of our members are working on the portfolio,” Slade said. “It’s an important part to wrap up the season and show everybody what we’ve done.”

This season while building and programming, students worked on making the robots faster, more efficient and more consistent. Building and rebuilding robots gives students an outlet to experiment with mechanical design and develop their problem solving skills. 

“My favorite part of robotics is really being able to have a challenge and to continue working at it throughout the season and see improvement,” Stewart said. “Also just being able to hang out with really cool people.”