The Upper School robotics team won the robotics championship last week against different surrounding schools. The team competed against 11 different robotics teams to earn enough points to win by doing challenges that involved the robot. Senior Javin Pandya comments on his team’s success.
“There’s 12 teams all competing in a two-versus-two against each other trying to move objects.” Robotics team member Javin Pandya said.
The team had spent every day after school trying to test the robot and train the drivers, people who controlled the robot, for the event.
“The biggest challenge was just taking a lot of time specifically for programming the robot since you never know if some random mechanical problem could happen,” Pandya said. “Which is why I go on the weekends and spend the night there just to really lock in that consistency.”
The robot the team had made was designed to take small blocks from a pit in a field. It was also designed to be driven manually by a driver on the team. Members of the team also took a trip to Georgia Tech last week to listen to a speaker about how to better their skills in robotics.
“We listened to one of their professors talk about what they expect from the students, and of course their main competition robotics leader. We got to see some of their robots and how they program their stuff.” Pandya continued.
The team also got to interact with other robots during the trip, including the ones in the facilities used at Georgia Tech.
“It really showed me how similar some of the high tech schools are. In some ways there are a lot of similarities with what I’ve been doing so far, and it helps encourage me,” Pandya said. “We understand how important it is to be exposed to this level of advanced technology.”