Robotics team takes first place, qualifies for state competitions

Now qualified for the Regional State Competition and the U.S. Open Robotics Tournament, the Central Robotics teams 2349A and 2349B worked as a team to get where they are now, for it is this very effort as a group, to which they attribute their success.

As a team, everyone works together towards a goal of making the best team. It is also imperative to make smart decisions when it comes to alliances. “Everyone must have a job… a builder, programmer, driver, writer and personal skill to build alliances with other schools,” said Coach Derek Lodge.

The first win was one for the books, as senior Korby Tilley said, “Since it’s our first win ever, it was a big deal to our whole team,”

“Kids went out and competed and played good preliminary matches,” said Lodge, and “[They] made good alliance selections, who are those that the team pairs up with at tournaments.”

To further improve their skills, the team does what any other sports team would do. “To get better, we go to competitions, check out other teams robots, think about our game strategy and design and improve the robot each match or tournament,” said Lodge.

Most memorably, Lodge recalls the winning alliance at the Omaha Gross Tournament where they played as a defensive robot and they were able to block all others teams’ shots.

Lodge says that the team can go out and compete with anyone, and for nationals and state he has confidence that “We expect to be in the top tier of teams,” said Lodge.

Before being a teacher and coach, Lodge had no previous experience with robotics when it came to Central so ideas keep coming and new plans are being implemented for better robots. “I am very good [at] the building and construction, but not very good at the programming,” said Lodge, as he looks to the future for more efficient methods of handling the software and hardware.

On the other hand, students function the same way where some members of the team are good at building and others are specialists at programming, with both skills working in conjunction for the win.

Robots are continuously developing as technology does, and students who are participating in robotics are the ones that often create the newest ones. They have the ability to help those impaired to once again walk, as well as perhaps allowing cars to drive their owners to destinations rather than the other way around.

Constantly, the world is changing all from the new things that technology allows people to do. From the class, students can see some of this in action, “Robotics helps develops interpersonal team building skills and allows people to truly understand engineering at its core,” said Tilley.

“We as a team have developed a skill set that allows us to work fluidly from every angle in a competition, both on and off the field,” he added.

Similar to any other sport, robotics is one that the competitors mainly compete with themselves. “We constantly look at what we can improve and what others have that we don’t,” said Tilley “I’d say our biggest competitor is ourselves.”

Robotics is offered at four different levels, each leading to the next with more advanced skills of creating robots. Lodge and Tilley both support taking classes as Tilley says “Robotics is a very laid-back class, it has no set rules or boundaries,” he says.

The class has a mindset of critical thinking and solving problems in a way that others do not think of. All of the classes are centered on designing robots for the competitions each season, and each year the field changes because of new techniques.

Robotics focuses on the STEM, science, technology, engineering and math, and this if a focus of engineering. Many students strive to be an engineer because of its intuitive thinking and the yearly income.

“Scientists find the problems, engineers fix the problems,” says Lodge.