Carlie Schwaeber ’12
Staff Writer

The robotics team is back in action with more goals and accomplishments to fulfill.  They are wasting no time preparing to compete, as they are hoping to do even better than last year.

Last year the robotics team competed in three regional qualifying competitions of the First Tech Challenge.

The First Tech Challenge is meant for future engineers, scientists and technologists to compete and learn with other people from different schools. 

At the competitions the robots compete against each other. 

“Each year, the purpose of the robot changes,” said Todd Lubin ’11, who joined robotics sophomore year. 

The teams receive a video on what the robot should be able to do when it is made, and it is up to the group to accomplish this. 

“At each competition, there are approximately five preliminary matches where your team is randomly assigned which robots you will be against and which robot will be on your alliance,” Lubin said.

He went on to explain that the teams change in each round and the better a team does in the qualifying rounds, the better the chance they have at getting invited to the World Championships in Atlanta.

“In Massachusetts, we placed first, in New York at the Javitt’s center, we placed first, and in Connecticut we placed second,” said Lubin’s twin brother Eric Lubin ’11, also a member of the team.

“Because of these performances, we were invited to compete in the First International Championships in Atlanta in April of last year.  The best 100 teams in FTC from around the world were invited, and in this competition we placed second.”

This year, however, the team took apart last year’s famous robot, “Shaquille O’Steel” and are going to use the recycled parts for the upcoming competitions.   

Although the team has done well in the past, the standards have been set a little higher this time. 

“This year, a new challenge was created that involves shooting wiffle balls into a center scoring area over 30 inches high and scoring as many points as possible,” said Eric Lubin. “Since our loss in last year’s final, our goals have been to do one better; to get first in the championships in Atlanta this coming year.  For that to happen we will have to first win at least on regional competition and then focus all our efforts towards preparing for Atlanta.”

There is no doubt that the robotics team has been very successful and they are still looking to raise the bar.

“This season we are looking to do better than we did last year,” Todd Lubin said, “That means we have our eyes on number one in the world.”