Three days of the week after school the mental work has not ended for the robotics team. The sun is bright and the practice is just beginning. Five team members sit barefooted in a pen, all crouched around their robot. State’s is approaching and the team must meet for their routine 3 hour practices of refining the robot. On Feb. 25 the team will traveled to the Robotics State Competition near Fort Lauderdale where they won a spot to compete at super regionals.

“States is a competition where basically where the top twenty teams in the state compete to go on to regionals. States is an awesome thing to accomplish because it shows how you can make it all the way up to states even though there is a mass number of teams in the state of Florida,” senior Nicholas Swaich said.

And this year, after competing all over Florida,  they must complete their new challenge. The challenge is announced earlier in the year so teams can begin preparations.

“This year the challenge was to pick up balls and throw them into the goals. And so the robots goal is to pick up the balls and actually shoot them into the goals,” senior Jaxon Brown said.

However there is more to the competition than completing the one goal. There are a variety of steps that must be looked at in order to win. For instance the team must work with other teams in randomly generated alliances.

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“You’ll play about six matches in your competition day. And you’ll, in each match, be randomly paired with another team as an alliance. You have to work together to get as many points as you can. Your wins are based on if you beat the other alliance,” Brown said. “There will always be four robots on the field trying to do the same thing. So you can actually coordinate with your alliance partner you were paired with so you guys don’t try and do the same thing at the same time. But your two robots have to out preform the other two robots.”

In addition, the team must also take into account the judging presentation. The presentation is another factor that can also advance the team further into the rounds.

“We do more than just build the robot too. For the judging presentation, there is a number of awards that you can win that can advance you just as much as the robot can. Those are based off of things like how much did you network with the local mg in your community or what kind of innovative design is in your robot, or how advanced was the programing for your robot,” Brown said.

This is not the Robotics team first trip to states. The current seniors who have been involved all four years were able to travel to states.

“It was at a college instead of a high school. They do more and give out scholarships at the state championships. It is just a bigger deal. It’s the entire state, so if you win that  you move on to super regionals which is about a quarter of the United States,” senior Ryan Hicks said.

Not only did the Robotics Team make it to states in 2014, but it was also the first year the club was founded by members Brown and Hicks.

“Me and Jaxon were the ones who started this team in 2013. We had previously done robotics in Middle school. There was no Robotics league in high school so we started our own team and ever since then it’s been getting better and better,” Hicks said.

And now, after only existing for four years, the team is currently ranked among the top in the world.

“We are third in state and fourth in world. So it feels good. We feel confident that we will be able to move on,” Hicks said.

So in order to compete in states they meet multiple times a week. They structure the practices, which are done at least three time a week for around three hours.

“The practices are usually very well organized and structured. Usually I’ll come and work for a little bit over three hours or a little bit under,” sophomore Marcus Melck said. “We break into groups, usually pairing older members of the team with newer members in order to teach them and pass on information while still getting the current job done. While we’re learning we like to have fun and it’s a good experience overall.”

In order to stay productive, the team takes specific measures to stay focused. This includes the division of tasks in order to spread out the work among the team members.

“Each member will execute and complete a certain task for the day. We usually divide up tasks into groups of two to three people and at the end of the day we hope to have all of those tasks completed,” Melck said.

However the team mainly focuses on revising the previous robot for the State Competition.

“It goes through a lot of revisions as we figure out what works and what doesn’t and we get everything working as well as possible,” Swaich said.

To establish these revisions the team looked at various problems they had previously encounter. That way, once the competition came around they wouldn’t have to face the same problems again.

“We looked at what failed at the last competition and what gave us trouble and we took those designs and refined them in hopes that we will eliminate those challenges for the state competition,” Brown said.

Though the team is now focusing on revising the robot, many elements go into building a robot. The team must design and build a robot that can be successful at competitions. And making a robot for a competition involves multiple steps such as design and programming.

“Over the years we learned to actually make a robot that is the best in the world you need to design very thoroughly. You need to be prepared and know exactly what you are going to build before you build it,” Swaich said. “So we use something called Autodesk inventor, which is where we make 3D models of our robot. And so we basically see what the robot will look like before it’s even made.”

While working on the design the team must also look at the programing aspects of robotics.

“We have phones in which we can download software that we code ourselves. And then we can implement that on the robot along with controls, like Xbox controllers, to control the robot. So what the code allows us to do is custom make and change the function of the controllers to execute different things,”Melck said.
Since the team goes through the process of design, programing, practice and competition, they are able to learn more about STEM and engineering as well as form some friendships.

“My favorite part about the team is the people in it. It’s a great group and we really connected together. We have a lot of fun while learning and experiencing this whole thing of robotics with each other,” Melck said.

In competing in states the team was able to place thrid overall. Therefore they are able to move on to the next competition, super regionals.

“Competing at states was definitely an interesting experience seeing all the teams from different places all around Florida. There were also much better teams, which made it more of a challenge for us during the competition,” freshman Mackey Jones said. “It’s a great feeling to have made it so far in my first year on the team and it’s pretty cool to be able to contribute to what we’ve done.”

The team will travel in a few weeks to Athens, Georgia in order to compete with a quarter of the United States. If they are successful on this platform they will move on to the world competition.