The Lafayette Robotics teams are often overlooked, but definitely provide a powerful positive force for academic achievement and involvement within our school.
Both teams, although both are relatively new, performed throughout the season, in the end making it to state and placing pretty highly there.
The challenge for this season of competition was revealed to them in September and they began work.
Sophomore Philip Underwood, a Robotics Team member, said, “This year’s challenge was called Bowled Over and there were a number of different aspects to the game such as moving a bowling ball, collecting racket balls and stacking crates.”
Freshman Dhruv Bohra said that he really enjoyed the fact that they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted and could draw up their own designs for the robot they were to use in competition.
They designed the robot to be able to push the bowling ball when remote-controlling the robot was not allowed, and stacking the crates via a forklift and filling them with balls through a conveyer belt feeding into the crates.
They had three opportunities to qualify for state, and qualified on their second chance by being in the top four teams for that competition.
Their season ended well, reflecting all of their hard work, and they placed 10th at State on Feb. 24.
“We did not qualify for the World Championship but still did very well considering that we were a rookie team,” Underwood said.
While they did not qualify for the World Championships this year, they will continue to focus on their designing skills and having a strong showing next year as well.
For Underwood, the most interesting thing about robotics was learning how to program the robot.
“Through robotics I learned a new programing language and learned many aspects of mechanical engineering from working with the TETRIX kits in order to design the robot,” Underwood said.
They were not solely focused on the competition and writing the codes, however.
Freshman Val Samsanob, the programmer for the other Lafayette team which placed 18th, said his favorite part of the season was the “teamwork and making friends.”
