[ot-caption title=”The Pine Crest Robotics team uses the iLab to build their robot for competitions.” (via Sophie Glassman, junior)”][spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

On October 29th, the Pine Crest Robotics Team participated in a fun event to warm up for the competition season where they spent the morning building and tweaking robots and code and had the opportunity to meet most of the other teams in the league to help each other out and learn new skills. “We would see what they can and can’t do, what their goals are, how their design is better, what we can take from them and improve on ourselves,” sophomore Simran Wadhwa, a member of the Crown Joules girls’ robotics team, noted. [spacer height=”20px”]

There was also a period for the teams to break into smaller groups to focus on different elements of the competition, such as coding and engineering. Referees inspected the robots to see if they met the criteria for the challenge and gave suggestions to improve them. The teams were all working on the “Vortex Challenge,” which involves creating robots to manipulate balls and carry them around or score goals to win points. There is a thirty-second period where the robots operate autonomously, and then a two-minute period where they are remote-controlled. With the time to hone their skills and prepare, it will be exciting to see how PC robotics will perform in the upcoming competitions. “It was a successful scrimmage for PC, and we learned a lot from the other teams,” said robotics teacher Mr. Delgado. Hopefully their hard work and preparation will pay off, as the next robotics tournament takes place on Saturday November 19th at Pine Crest School. [spacer height=”20px”]