The Robotics Club, “Boss Bots,” competed against 15 other teams in their first tournament on Saturday, December 8th.

This was the first of 3 opportunities for the robotics club to qualify for the state championship match, according to co-captain Matthew Stickle. “This is a qualifier to see who would be moving on to state,” he confirmed.

Each year, a new challenge is presented to high school robotics clubs across the country. According to senior Meera Madra, this year’s challenge involved putting rings on a rack. Teams attempt to make their robots accomplish this task, along with other actions, in order to score points during any of the 2 minute and 30 second matches. Teams can also score points when opposing robots drive onto their robot, to then be lifted up. However, Madra said the robot’s “ramp was a little too steep I guess for other robots to do, so the first time a robot went up it, it flipped over.”

According to Madra and Stickle, the team did not do as well as it could have.”We didn’t do that well because we didn’t practice enough,” said Madra. After the competition, the team decided to “change some things in the design to make [the robot] more efficient.” Robot club advisor, Nita Madra said “we are redesigning the claw because that was the biggest flaw in our design.”

This year the Campo robot is 60 pounds and fits into a 18x18x18 cube, according to Stickle. Other teams were intimidated by the size of the robot, but the intimidation was lost when Campo “didn’t know how to control it,” said Madra.

These tournaments are not only about robot conflict. According to Madra, the tournament directors stress “gracious professionalism” and working together. “[The tournament] was really fun. We got to see robots from different teams and their designs,” said Madra.