Robotics Club

By Bill Li '24

Article from the Winter Carnival 2024 Hearth Issue

There are many opportunities at Eaglebrook for students to develop their interests. Students can choose between many activities during their free time in art, sports, or STEM. The Robotics Club is the perfect place for students interested in participating in the First Tech Challenge. In this robotics competition, students compete by designing, building, and coding robots that complete specific tasks efficiently. 

The Robotics Club’s main goal is to attend the First Tech Challenge Robotics Competition. Every year, details of the competition are modified to innovate and adapt to modern day technology. This year, teams have various objectives to be completed—such as picking up hexagonal pixels of various colors and placing them on a slanted backdrop. Alternative ways of scoring include forming specific mosaics with the pixels, suspending the robot from the truss/beam during the endgame, and launching paper airplanes to different landing areas scoring different points. The need for high accuracy while having many different aspects of scoring from placing pixels to launching paper airplanes makes this competition especially challenging. 

This year’s Robotics Club consists of students from different levels of experience and age. However, that did not cease or slacken the group’s progress and perfect collaboration. During every meeting, specific jobs were assigned to each member to make sure that everyone would be occupied. People are either brainstorming, building, coding, test driving, or modifying the robot. The Sixth Formers in the club act as leaders to guide and encourage the group. 

Being part of the club requires dedication from every single member. During a regular week, the Robotics Club meets every single day despite our busy schedules. It is challenging for everyone to attend every meeting on time while balancing the time they should spend on homework or applications. However, every club member understands that being a part of the team represents putting in the effort and time to build the robot, and when the team finally goes to competition in late January, everyone feels extremely prepared as their hard work is going to pay off. 

Robotics Club members include Paul Kung ‘24, Leroy Fu ‘24, Leo Wan ‘24, Skye Zhang ‘24, Alan Gao ‘24, Seb Woo ‘24, Ryan Chen ‘24, Bill Li ‘24, Branden Zhang ‘25, Alex Xi ‘25, and Titan Tanihaha ‘25.