Step into the robotics room during any given fifth block, one will be met with the clacking of keys typing an elaborate code, the whirring of gears against the floor, and a constant flow of ideas.
Haven’s robotics club meets nearly every day in advisor Mr. Page Brown’s room to tinker, and the team is looking towards a busy and competitive school year.
For the past few years, Brown has been teaching a robotics class in addition to the club team, though they differ in objectives. This year, the class will run in the spring semester.
“In the robot class, we learn more on a small scale. We build little, tiny robots that do specific tasks, like throw a ball or pick up a block and put it in a different place,” Brown said. “The robot team, they build a big, giant robot that’s three feet by three feet.”
Additionally, the club team is provided with the opportunity to compete in district and regional level competitions. With the graduation of last year’s senior class, the team lost a significant amount of seniors, meaning they are forging ahead into this year’s competition season with a smaller team, though with lots of fresh interest as well.
“We have about ten people coming normally, because we lost somewhere from five to ten seniors,” junior team member Maisie Sentivan said. “We definitely have some new people that are interested.”
The main competition Haven follows is the FIRST Robotics Competition, which begins in January when the “prompt” is released.
“They give us the task that we have to do in January, [meaning] they tell us what the game is,” Brown said. “Then you have six weeks to build a robot, and then the competition starts.”
The team will compete in two district competitions to accumulate points in an attempt to qualify for the regional competition held at Lehigh University.
In these competitions, students on the team are assigned specific roles on the “Drive Team” which is tasked with presenting the robot they’ve created.
“There’s the driver, the programmer, the engineer,” sophomore team member Heidi Muller said. “I’m the human player who interacts with the robot.”
Sophomore Oliver Schultz continues with the coding he learned last year to put the pieces together.
“Without the code, the robot is just a big pile of metal and plastic,” Schultz said.
Despite the fact that the competition season does not start until the winter, students are hard at work practicing and keeping busy with other jobs.
“Right now we’re building the frame of a robot, so that we can practice driving,” Brown said. “You’ll probably see us in the coming weeks driving it around the school during fifth block.”
WIth big aspirations and competition prices rising, the team is looking to zero in on fundraising.
“We’re trying to do some recruiting, and we’re going to be doing some fundraising,” Brown said. “The price of the competition went up this year, so we have some money to make up. We’re going to try to go down and get some businesses to see if they’ll donate some money to our team, and try to get us to the regional competition if we qualify.”
Though there may be less hands than usual, the robotics team presents an overwhelming zeal for what they’re doing and optimism for what they can create.
“That’s the thing,” Brown said. “We don’t start until January, and they’re here already.”
