By Francesca De Luca

The Tempe Prep First Robotics club recently finished the official build season for competition a few weeks ago by bagging their bot. Although the robot that will compete in the March tournament is essentially complete, the team’s work has not ended. On the contrary, they are starting to build an identical robot from scratch.

The second robot, according to team mentor Gennaro De Luca, “is to train the drivers for the competition.” This machine will not be allowed to be used in the competition, but as Gennaro said, “it will be a good experience and they can fix the first robot.”

The actual robot this year is an interesting combination of different mechanisms. There is the Frisbee shooting component that has made the team name the robot “Tron,” but there is also a rotating plunger device that the team has codenamed “Luigi.”

Meanwhile, the team will continue to work on their second robot, which might be called Tron 2. Or maybe “Tron-Mario.”