Have you wondered what goes on for the robotics team or what to expect if you were to join? I got a chance to talk to Andrew from the robotics team. I asked him about his experience on the team and what he and the rest of the team does at meetings throughout the year. “We set goals and try to get them done,” Andrew said when talking about what happens at a regular meeting. “We break up into groups to work on them and move around to help,” he continued. 

Every year the team has to build a new robot for a new game that FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, announces to officially kick off the season. This year’s theme is “Charged Up” and talks about renewable energy and ways robotics can help with it. This year’s challenge requires teams to move cones and inflatable cubes to different shelves and nodes to score points. In the last few seconds of the match teams race to a charging station which leans back and forth and have to try and balance it with the other teams. For every game a team plays, they are put on an alliance, red or blue, with 2 other random teams. The teams work together as one for the event and then the next game alliances are reshuffled. The WCHS robotics team has two competitions on the schedule as of now, one in Cincinnati in March. The team placed in the middle of the pack and didn’t qualify for worlds there. Their second competition is in Pittsburgh during April. If the team does well enough they could move onto worlds at the end of April, which is in Houston.