While the rest of the high school was participating in Cookies last month, seven Parker students on the Robotics Team placed 42nd in their division in the 2016 “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” (FIRST) World Championship in St. Louis. This was the first trip to Worlds in the team’s history at Parker.

After the Midwest Regional event, held from March 31 to April 2 at the UIC Pavilion, where the team placed 23rd out of 60, the 15 members of the Robotics Team put their team on a waitlist to make it to “Worlds,” as the team calls it. On April 18, the team was chosen from a blind lottery. “When I found out I was speechless,” team captain and senior Jake Miner said. “I wound up going around the school telling everyone I could find.”

There were over 600 teams competing in the four day-long competition at “The Dome At America’s Center,” home of the ex-St. Louis Rams. “The event was absolutely massive,” Miner said. “We were one of 600 different teams from around the world including teams from Israel, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.”

During FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) and First Robotics Challenge (FRC) events there are five to ten randomly paired matches that the robots compete in. Each event has a set task that the competitors’ robots are built to perform.  This year’s competition had a Medieval theme. “It’s called FIRST Stronghold,” freshman Nathan Satterfield said. “In the field there’s a castle and two low and two high goals, and there’s boulders that robots can pick up and put in the high or low goals for points.”

In order to enter a middle zone, where the balls are, the robots must cross defenses. “There are ten different defenses,” Satterfield said. “One’s a drawbridge that you have to pull down and cross. One is another drawbridge type that you have to lift up. There’s one that has four alternating boards to go over. There’s one that’s a door that opens one way, so you go through the door, spin around, and go back through. And there’s even more than that.” The teams were given this information before the competition began.

To begin the robotics season, freshmen and sophomores compete in the FTC. “That’s smaller robots,” Satterfield said. “Those fit within an 18 inch cube. For the FRC which is by juniors and seniors, which is what is currently going on, we build one ‘bot that we have to put in a bag after six weeks.” After those six weeks are up, the team builds a second, identical robot that has mechanisms that are removed and attached to the bagged robot during the competition. These FRC robotics are very large but have to be under 120lbs.”

The Robotics Team commits to three days of meetings, a total of 10 hours a week. “Our team is a lot smaller than others,” Miner said, “but there is a lot of communication between us, and it helps everyone know what is going on with the robot at any given time.” Alongside Miner is senior Roger Moore, head of mechanical; Satterfield, mechanical and media; freshman Gus Caplan, programming electrical; junior JJ Bernhardt, programming; and freshmen Max Lewandowski along with freshman Cole Rogers, both mechanical field.

Miner said, “I’m interested in robotics because it’s fun to build stuff and see your finished product actually work.”

Satterfield talked about the process of learning the program. “My friends will say, ‘You know so much!’” he said. “But I knew nothing at the beginning of the season about robotics. You just have to jump in and say, ‘I’m committed to the team,’ and just learn how to play and learn how to build.”