Amid the Fab Lab’s whirring drills, the robotics team is gearing up for their first competition on March 1-3 under the FIRST Robotics Competition. This year’s tournament, Crescendo, involves allies between three competitive teams, challenging robots to retrieve and shoot discs into specified targets.

Placing third and second in previous state competition, expectations are set high. If the team is to win state this season, it will potentially qualify them to make it to the world competition. Avrione Martin, junior and Head of Programming, relays how the team’s been working towards their goal.

”Deadline’s coming up pretty fast now, but it’s a matter of taking it step-by-step,”  he said, “Having a system of tasks between the committees makes the process more digestible.”

The team had their kickoff date the first Saturday after the new year. Currently in their assembly phase of their competition’s robot, Veer Jhaveri, senior and president, shares the process behind the collaborative efforts that’ve culminated in their work.

“This year, we broke into small groups and presented our ideas to the team. We’ll jot down ideas and elements we like from each one,” he said. “From there, we begin to refine these ideas and prioritize the elements we want to incorporate in terms of design. It’s a huge interactive process.”

This year, about 20 new members have joined this year. Anastasia Savic, junior and vice president, sheds light on the increase in student voice in this year’s group.

“What really changed this year was we had more students get involved with hands-on experience,” she said. “Coach influence was more of the build of our club, but this year we really built the foundation off of our student based team and training.”

So, here’s the plan…

The mechanics behind the team’s robot, The Elephant