The WHHS robotics team has been working on improving their robot building ability to get ready for the first ever Wayne Hills hosted robotics tournament. The tournament will be held in the Gifford Gym from 8:00am to 4:30pm on January 24th. The PATRIOTS is the name for the WHHS rookie team and also the team to be rooting for this weekend. A robotics tournament is both difficult and exciting; It consists of head-to-head competitions between opposing teams and their robots. A team has many different roles similar to a basketball team with their positions, a robotics team is comprised of a programmer, a build team, a motion controller, and a robot designer. The whole team must work together to develop the most effective design for their robot and then build it and be able to battle with it.

To increase the pressure in a tournament the teams are limited in repair time after their battle, which forces the teams to decide what the most important thing to fix is because they likely won’t be able to fully repair their machine after every battle. “It’s a science,” said Junior Marlin Kalutota who is the programmer on the team,”we need to create the most durable robot while still making it quick enough to attack and move. Doing this takes time and even when an agreement is reached between the team we may still make last minute changes to our game plan.” The team seems to know what they need to do in order to win, now all they need to do is execute. Come see this young WHHS robotics team compete this weekend, the tournament is free of charge and is surely going to be an intense tournament.