The Traveling Robot

Leah Seitz, Staff Writer

Whirring machines. Rushing team members. Drilling and droning of power tools. The Pirate Robotics Team, #6032, created yet another successful robot this year.

The Robotics Team competed in the Miami Valley First Power Up Robotics Competition February 28-March 3 and advanced into an alliance with two other teams after they did exceptionally well in the specialty they chose. They were picked for an alliance in Pennsylvania so they could compete in the Pittsburgh Regional Competition on March 22-24, and after winning Regionals they are now looking forward to First World Championship in Detroit on April 25-28, where they could potentially be picked for another alliance.  

The Robotics season kicked off in January when the First Power Up game was introduced to the whole world. Our WCHS team was honored to hold an event where several other local teams gathered to watch a live feed explaining the rules. The team studied the game and spent six weeks creating a robot to perform their favorite strategy, the vault, where the robot picks up Power Cubes and hands them to team members to earn Power Ups. Their robot competed alongside two other robots from different teams against another group of three.

My favorite part of the competitions is getting to sit back and watch the team solve robot problems on their own, run the pit, work with other teams, and compete,” said Mr. Michael Neal, Robotics Team mentor and WCHS math and science teacher.

WCHS Robotics is funded through grants, sponsorships, and fundraisers, and receives tremendous amounts of support from local companies.

I love that Robotics is student led and cost free. It helps teach us how to engineer, program, and market. After two years we can even get a Varsity letter,” said freshman Zoe Bowman.

Be sure to congratulate the Robotics Team and wish them luck in Detroit!