Robots don’t move by themselves…at least not yet, but who are the students on our campus who are in control?  Here’s the scoop of what’s new and the rust that Sage Creek’s robotics teams retained at the beginning of their new season that has followed them throughout the previous year.

Last season they had three teams: Botcats, Level Up and Crow Force.

The Crow Force captain and junior robotics club president, Nathan Pereira, feels the team has grown a lot over the last three years.

“[We have] learned quite a bit this year,” Pereira said, “For the experienced members, reflecting on the mistakes of last year, we rebranded the team and improved our overall marketing. For the newer members, they learned the basics of their department.”  

Pereira also has high goals for this year’s club.

“Our goals for this year’s program is number one, to build the interest of students in STEM careers, and number two, have all teams make it to at least the regional tournament.”

Every year brings changes and new things to explore. For robotics, some major changes occurred within their teams. The club operates in four different teams, each with three sections: Business, Outreach, and with a combined team of Hardware and Software.

Along with that, robotics has introduced some new elements for this year’s program.

“We got a new team… Python, which is run by Noe Avila. This year, we also have set and defined team budgets which will make acquiring parts we need slightly more difficult,” Senior Riley Hull explained.

A huge part of being in this program is participating in yearly competitions with other schools and districts.

The competition process and the step by step procedures that lead to the awards ceremony are a long process.

“Competitions are two-parts, however, the first few competitions only have the first part. There is the robot challenge part, in which robots complete the task of the season and the judging part. Judging is a ten-minute process where the judges can ask questions or the team can present a prepared talk. This judging is used in deciding who gets the awards from that competition,” Hull said, “These awards, along with standings from the first part of the tournament, decide who gets to move along as the season continues and teams progress up the bracket.”

Even though the program has found great success and continues to grow, Pereira still sees some room for improvement in Crow Force.

“The team can improve throughout the year by analyzing the current flaws in the team. For example, after trial and error, we came to [a] conclusion that our previous system that would supposedly lift our robot could not actually lift it,” Pereira explained, “Thus, we made a more powerful and efficient design that could do the job. There still is a lot more to do. We need to make our robot perform the tasks in this year’s robot game as quickly as possible.”

Seeing how this program has grown throughout the years and the success it’s had over time— more accomplishments are on the horizon for both the members of robotics and the program itself in the near future.