Robotics team emerges victorious in statewide competition

The robotics team won the statewide robotics competition March 3 in Charleston. 

The team worked together and assembled a robot more than fit for the job. 

Robotics team member Alex Lowe said “I was stoked about winning the whole state competition. I mean, there were tons of robots and tons of teams. And to win overall was pretty awesome”

To prepare for the competition, they ordered parts from a robotics website, put it together and coded it so the robot can do specific actions. The robot was equipped with a miniature forklift built into it, along with wheels which are moved by a remote controller. 

To be able to work together and put together a fully functioning robot requires some skill. You have to have excellent work in teams, and skills in building, science and math. 

The objective of the competition is to get the robot to stack cones into zones. There are three  zones and the further the zone is, the more points that zone is worth. The point values are 5, 10, and 20. 

Team member Josh Conrad said “There were some robots that were good enough to make it to the 20 zone, but our robot could only make it to the 10 zone. But that was better than some other robots.”

Some of the robots were not manufactured well enough to make it further than the 5 zone. 

Team member Matthew Bowlby said “The competition was fun. I’m working to become an engineer so it's great to get some hands on experience.”

Now that the state competition is over, the team will move on to the world competition. There is no national competition because after a national competition was over, they wouldn't have enough teams to compete in the world competition. In the world competition,  they play the same game against 42 other countries.