A team of just five boys has crafted a self-functioning robot that can perform many tasks. Together, during their seventh-period robotics class, they work on ensuring that their robot can execute its tasks in a way that will ensure the team the most points.
Each task is worth a varied amount of points each with a different level of difficulty. Some of the key challenges are for the robot to pick up rings and put them on a pole, move in the direction of the pole, as well as balance on a seesaw.
The team has had to overcome some crises. In order to ensure points, they had to input some new software and mainframe updates.
The robotics team’s upgrades on the functionality and efficacy of their robot have modeled to that of the Daft Punk song (Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.)
“I’m feeling confident about this competition,” team member Ethan Bober said. “The upgrades that we installed have allowed our motors to move faster and stronger.”
Their advisor, Chris Martin, has helped prepare the team for their competition.
“I aided the boys in building and test driving their robot,” Martin said. “I helped them understand the rules and guidelines of the competition and provided them the resources to be successful.”
The team was decided very early in the school year where Mr. Martin hosted a competition between his Robotics class to see who would qualify for the competition team. The skills that they were against each other in were abilities needed to craft an effective robot (i.e. coding and mechanical engineering).
With this competition rose the cream of the claw in the class, where the best in their certain skills came together to craft a single robot.
Each team member has their specialty, yet are all versed in all of the tasks required to be a proficient team member. For instance, Ethan Kalmis and Dawn Kim were often the ones steering the robot and would act as the “drivers.” Whereas others, such as Ethan Bober and Jared Garfinkel, were coders that would lead in coding the robot.
When these subsets of skills came together, it creates a powerful robot and an even more powerful team which has been seen throughout their team dynamic.
“The team is all very competitive with each other and push their teammates to be the best that they can be,” advisor Chris Martin said. “But they are also great friends that have come together to make an exceptional robot for our competition.”
After a semester of diligently fine-tuning and tweaking their robot, their hard work finally paid off as they received 3rd place at their district competition.
Throughout the next semester, the team will continue working on their robot to be better prepared for future competitions.
“Every run is a learning moment,” team member Evan Weinblatt said. “After the competition, we noticed what we could do to improve for future competitions to hopefully score higher next time.”
