The robotics team has been hard at work preparing for Botball since early January. Botball is a competition in which teams from different schools design and compete with robots. The entire year is dedicated to the team building the robot and programming it. The competition will be held on Apr. 30, 2016 at University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The robotics team has a group of dedicated students that meet everyday after school. The purpose of robotics is to learn new skills as a programmer and a builder, to build a close relationship with teammates and to also acquire new experiences.
The students became involved in robotics because it allowed them to apply their skills in programming to something tangible. The students mentioned that they found robots interesting in general. They also enjoy being able to constantly learn new things each time they meet and to expose themselves to a variety of things and to meet new people along the way.
Robotics became a club at Malden High School around five years ago. The auto shop teacher, Chris Bazzinotti, won a scholarship to put the school into the competition and secure the building parts, something that would have cost several thousand dollars without the scholarship. Since then, the cost has lessened every year which is why MHS is able to participate.
Club advisor, physics teacher Brian Morrison, stated that the club is very student-run. Morrison is there to guide the students, but does not participate in the building of the robot. The students work on the robots and program them so that it can complete the obstacle course in a time efficient way. They also build and design concepts of robots and come up with potential ideas.
The point of building the robots is to get them to complete as many tasks as possible. For example, two years ago the club made a model based off of the Mars rover. The robot was programmed to land on Mars, and one task it had to complete was to collect dirt samples.
If you are interested in joining the robotics club, they meet every day after school in B444 and new members are always welcome.
