Two Hewlett High robotics teams advance to Regional Championships

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Two of Hewlett High School’s robotics teams, Bionica and Roboboogie, will be headed to regionals, in March.

These are just two out of the four robotics teams the school offers, along with Innovo and Nexus.

Regionals are not the only level of competition these teams have competed at. Roboboogie appeared at the World Championships and in 2022, 2023 and in 2024 Bionica went.

Qualifiers were held at Sewanhaka High School, in Elmont on Jan. 18 and 19.

Each day, they competed against 19 other teams and the theme this year was “Into the Deep,” which uses ideas that can be applicable for submersibles — a mechanical device that can operate underwater, either remotely or autonomously.

The competition is comprised of an interview in the morning, where they present a portfolio of their progress with building, coding, community outreach and how they connect to the other schools.

“They do their interviews as a panel, so each main member of the team gets to present on a certain area of the project,” said Daniel Duffey-Birkenstock, coach. “In addition to presenting on community outreach they also talked about how things went with building the robot, what their design process was like and any advantages or challenges they encountered during the process of building and coding.”

Bionica scored high on their interview and the judges said, “it was one of the best interview they’ve ever seen,” according to Birkenstock.

In coordination with their performance in the robot presentation portion, they were awarded the Second Place Inspire Award, which automatically qualified them for regionals. The team received a trophy for their accomplishments.

Additionally, Roboboogie received the Connect Award for their work with connecting with other schools, mentors in the community and local engineers.

“Based on their interviews that the judges did, they felt that Roboboogie was the most well-connected team,” Birkenstock added. “Along with their overall points this weekend, they also qualified for regionals.”

Both robots had arm mechanisms, Bionica’s was based on a “Lazy Susan” and the arm had 360 degree mobility. While Roboboogie’s had an extendable arm, and both utilized different technologies to complete the necessary tasks.

“The ingenuity that these kids bring to the project is incredible, I’m really proud of both teams for a strong showing at qualifiers,” Birkenstock said. “They’ve spent six hours every Friday working on this in the workshop, and up until the last moment they were fine-tuning, coating and making adjustments to make sure they have the best showing possible.”

Jeremy Ginzburg, president of Hewlett Robotics and captain of Roboboogie, has been involved all four years of high school and formed long-lasting relationships.

“It’s very easy to make friends here, a lot of people have the same experience,” Ginzburg said. “Collaborating with other students and meeting our mentors is one of the best experiences.”

He is proud of his team winning the Connect Award and appreciates how hard his team members worked.

“We put in a lot of long hours and to this team it wouldn’t be worth it unless you had friends along side working at the same pace and finishing the robot right before competition,” he added. “Those moments before competition when stress is high, but you have your friends next to you so it makes it fun at the same time.”

Deniz Artan, co-captain of Bionica and head builder joined robotics due to being exposed at an early age and garnering a passion for it.

“I specifically opined Bionica because of STEAM night in elementary school and they way that they spoke and advertised themselves really spoke to me,” she said. “From fifth grade on I really knew I wanted to be apart of team Bionica.”

She is thankful for her team members and proud for winning the Second Place Inspire Award for their performance.

“We were able to get up to a level where we placed fourth on the leader board at the end of the day, it was very special,” Artan said.