By Maya Kostov

Robotics is all about teamwork. You have to work together to build, program, and design every part of the robot. The Junior High VEX Robotics team is off to a great start this season.

In robotics, there are two distinctive groups. There are the programmers and the builders. The programmers work to protect the robot, whether it’s in autonomous (no control) or self-driving. Eighth grader Andre Chavez says, “I like being a programmer because it’s a great practice for later usage of programming skills and the software that we are using visualizes programming very well, thus providing a strong basis for programming.”

Currently, 8th graders Adam Lucero, Daniel Tsark, and Waley Lin are building lifts for the two robots. The purpose of this is to have something to defend against other robots but to also score points.

Adam says, “My favorite part about robotics is using the portable saw to cut pieces of metal in half.”

Louis Ternyik, Marzuk Hasan, Matthew Surin, and Estevan Roig are building the bases for the two new robots for this season. They also need to attach wheels and motors onto the bases. Then the bases are sent to the programmers where they see how the base is built and program accordingly.

Naomi Palmer and a few of the other members are taking apart the robots from last year to use for parts. Their first competition is coming up fast and, at this rate, they will do amazing.