The Hewlett High School Robotics club, in existence for 13 years, is in the initial building and coding stages of designing its task-completing robots, a usual six-week process before the annual, regional-qualifier competition against nearly 35 other teams on Long Island.
There are three teams within the club — Roboboogie, Bionica and Innovo — which welcomes any student, freshman through senior, to join after school in room 234 every Friday.
Students typically choose to stay at school and work on their robots for nearly four hours. At the Oct. 29 meeting, each team worked on the blueprints of their robots by taking apart old robots or sketching out multi-angle diagrams.
Though there are three separate teams, club meetings often involve all students collaborating to teach or learn from their peers. “The idea is that they kind of mentor the younger members” said physics teacher Matthew Schildknecht, Robotics Club co-adviser and programming coach.
Seniors Yaseen Maqsudi and Yoni Sheerit, and junior Brian Chen invited the club to another classroom for an optional coding class. Almost the entire, knowledge-hungry club followed the boys for the coding PowerPoint, which will likely be useful in the robot building process.
“Most of the people who join robotics come in because they have an interest in it, but they don’t necessarily have the experience that everybody else does,” said junior Addison Star, a Roboboogie co-captain.
Club members who find opportunities to learn or teach themselves applicable skills outside of school will often bring the knowledge back to the club for sharing. “We want to teach everyone else how to do these certain things, so then they know,” said junior Lily Cohen, Roboboogie’s business and marketing manager.
The student-run classes are a new addition to club format this year, and, according to Star, have proved to be helpful for students.
“It gives them [younger members] a chance to learn the way you would learn in school,” she said. “Usually in robotics, you have to learn by watching and doing and asking questions, so this, we found, really gives a base foundation of information.”
Sophomore Brandon Salazar an Innovo team member, recognizes the opportunities that the club has presented him.
“You just learn things you’d never think you would know, and you get to experience things to help you in the future,” Salazar said. “It just helps with a lot of aspects of life that you would never realize. You learn a lot by being around other people like this.”
Each year, Robotics Club students must build robots to compete within the qualifiers, competitions between Long Island robot builders that precede the regional competition.
The teams aim to build on past success in qualifying competitions. All three teams qualified for the 2018 regional competition.
This year, the game involves four teams, which set up in a 12-square-foot playing field and compete, interchangeably working in alliance or opposition with each other for multiple matches.
Each match lasts for two and a half minutes, and students will use their robots to transport objects, called “freight” within the space. Different freights are placed in specified areas, such as “shipping hubs” or “warehouses” to score points. There are other ways to earn points, including displays of good sportsmanship between competitors.
