By Rachel Dinh
If you happened to take a look into Morsch Mechanics, the workshop where the high school robotics team meets every Saturday, you’ll see a familiar face: Alminatus. Alminatus is the robot built for last year’s First Robotics Competition tournament that earned the Creative Award.
The team has worked hard to polish up Alminatus to get it fully functional for this past Saturday’s tournament. The objective remains the same: crossing the opponent’s defenses, shooting “boulders” into the towers, and finally scaling the opponent’s towers.
Aimee Cheng gives insight on how the season has been so far: “It’s been pretty great. There was a lot to fix on our robot, but we were able to fix mostly everything and even made some new changes. For this upcoming competition I think we will do pretty well because we are more experienced.”
One change in this year’s robotics team is that the mentors have let students run each team, which includes mechanical, electrical, programming, scouting, communications, CAD (computer-aided design), Field, and Drive. This certainly instills a sense of responsibility in the leaders.
Olek Piechaczek is the leader of the mechanical team, and one of his jobs is giving tasks to the less experienced members. Olek, who’s been with the team since freshman year, shows how robotics is both enjoyable and practical. “It shows you what it’s like to be an engineer, working with materials to make a product or in this case a robot. You learn how to take motors, aluminum sheets, bolts, and wiring into a cohesive build. And through that whole, you learn to work together with fellow teammates to make the best possible robot.”
Prior knowledge of robotics is not required to join the team. If you join, you can discover the different aspects of each team and find out which part you’d like to be a part of. What is needed, however, is dedication and passion to the club. Ask any of the Robotics members from last year, and you will find out about the countless hours spent at Morsch near tournament-time.
You might also feel the excitement that comes along with robotics tournaments, as you see the long-time members’ eyes light up whenever they talk about getting 5th place in the world in 2015, or just beating the Holy Cows. 