STORY UPDATE (March 12, 1013)

The team was able to go into the semifinals at Madera, but lost in the second match of the semifinals by only three points. It was a close call but the team was happy that they had gotten far in the competition, many said.

Even though the team did not win the competition they won other awards such as the “Hard Hat Pin” and the “Industrial Design Award.” The team is, however, preparing for the next competition in Long Beach during spring break.

After months of preparation, students in robotics have finalized their robot for their upcoming Central Valley Regionals competition in Madera March 6– 9.

The entire team has spent a long time working on the practice and real robot. The practice robot was used so that they could find the best methods for their robot and increase their chances of winning the competition.

The game in the competition this year features the robots working as a team of three to work together to be able to cross zones and shoot a ball over a truss. The game is much like basketball, and the robots on the same team have to help each other. Points are given if the robots manage to cross a zone, give assists and throw the ball over a certain range.

Every member of the robotics team helps with the robot; they are all separated into different groups with each group having a specific job. The groups are the mechanical team, media team, design team, electrical/programming team, business team and the MATLAB, which deals with analysis and simulation.

The mechanical team deals with building the parts the robots need. The people in MATLAB deal with analyzing and simulating projections. They use physics and calculus to determine the factors that would contribute to having the ball go across the room. The design team also has people recording data of all the robots in the competition to determine which robots they should put on their alliance team. The data also helps the team later on in case they go against a team they had worked with previously.

This competition is the first one in 2014 and the robotics team has worked hard in hopes of winning the competition. “We win!” said confident Matej Zampach as he helped set up chairs for the incoming visitors coming to see the robot as the team was prepping for this current competition.

Junior Elizabeth Abramyan said that the team had high hopes to win. Junior Julien Courtade also expressed this feeling, saying, “We hope to win but mainly we have fun.”