The Palo Alto High School Robotics Club is in the second week of the 2011 FIRST Robotics Competition.
This year, the competition’s challenge is LOGOmotion. To win, robots must score the most points during the game by performing various tasks and creating the FIRST logo on the game field. Game and point descriptions can be found here.
Senior team captain Eamon Winden set high goals, wanting the team to win at least at the regional level.
“I expect that we will build a strong robot, but whether or not we win is dependent on the rest of the season,” Winden said.
Each competing team has six weeks to design and construct a robot for the competition. Paly’s Robotics Club is currently building its robot in the robotics lab in room 903.
“We are still designing most of the robot, but have begun building the base,” Winden said on Friday.
FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology and is an international high school robotics competition that Paly robotics has participated in since 1996.
To participate in the competition, high schools must create a team of at least 25 students and the team must build a robot weighing 120 pounds that can complete the game task, according to junior Max Najork, also a team captain.
Because teams have limited resources and schools do not provide funds for clubs, the competition requires teams to raise funds to build their robot.
To fundraise this year, the Paly robotics team asked various companies to sponsor them, according to Najork.
Feb. 22 marks the deadline of the robot construction process and shipment of the robot for the regional competitions.
The game challenge last year was soccer played three-on-three. To score points, robots had to run over bumps and shoot a soccer ball into the goal. Paly Robotics won fourth in both of the regional competitions that it attended, and each regional had more than 60 competing robots, according to Winden.
“You can go to as many regionals as you can pay for,” Winden said. “Last year we went to Portland and San Jose State University.”
Paly Robotics will attend the Sacramento Regional on March 17 at UC Davis and the Silicon Valley Regional on March 31 at San Jose State University.