Staff Writer
The Apex High Robotics Club allows students the opportunity to create and program robots for competition. Consisting of nearly 30 students with two teams, the club offers members a great way to showcase their engineering skills.
“We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we’re always doing something interesting,” explains president and senior Daniel Mahinthakumar. The students have to build a robot capable of completing an assigned task during the meetings. Half of the members work on programming while the other members build the machine. Using trial and error, they eventually create a robot that can perform a specific function. “It can get tedious at times, but it’s definitely worth it and it’s a really fun process,” says Mahinthakumar.
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| A robot the club created designed to pick up a bowling ball. |
The club has two teams, each with 10 members. Not all of the students are able to compete, but they still get to build and learn about robotics. Ben Cummins, the club’s advisor, said “The best part about Robotics Club is when I can see the students’ minds churning and when they really get creative. They come up with great ideas that could lead to something very useful in the future.”
Once the team has built a robot, they take it to competition. On February 25, the club traveled to Greensboro to compete with teams from all over North Carolina and surrounding states. “It’s a knock-out style tournament where each team’s robot must complete the assigned task to make it to the next round,” says Cummins. The tasks that the robots must complete include things like lifting a bowling ball, moving baskets or collecting small objects.
The Apex High Robotics Club placed tenth out of 32 teams. “We did better than last year but definitely not our best,” says Cummins. In 2009, the club went all the way to the World Championship.
