On January 7th 2018, the Wayne Hills Robotics team participated in the Western Wrangle State Competition for the title of “Best Robot.” Over 300 viewers attended the event, as well as 31 participating teams from New Jersey. Although Wayne Hills did not secure the victory, the Hills team emerged with a notable bronze medal. Chatham High School secured the first place victory with their robot named, “Fear The Gear.”

The way that competition works is as follows: each match consists of 4 teams. Each team is required to complete three parts: autonomous, teleop, and endgame. During the autonomous part of the competition, robots are operated using solely pre-programmed instructions. Teleop is a driver-controlled part where teams use their robot to retrieve debris from a playing field and moving them to another location. Ultimately, end game refers to the final 30-seconds of the driver-controlled period where the robots earn points for hanging from a pull-up bar and claiming an all-clear signal for their team.

We had a chance to have a chat with sophomore Divyansh Ojha, the lead designer of the Wayne Hills Robot, as well as the Robotics Teacher Mr. Yost, who claimed, “Our Entire Robot was Designed by Divyansh without any formal Solid works training. He was able to completely design the physical robot on the computer and perform a stress analysis of the components before we built the actual robot. It is truly an amazing achievement.”  It is clear that Divyansh also had loads of fun performing in the competition for he enthusiastically exclaimed, “we did so well in the competition. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully we can go to Worlds again this year!”

We congratulate the top 3 teams and hope they continue to do well in the next competition. Since the first place winners of the upcoming competition get to advance to Worlds, the Wayne Hills Robotics Team remains hopeful for another upcoming victory!