Nuts and Bots: The Robotics Team

Robots are doing much more than cleaning your floors these days. Each year, the team works together with coaches Potter and Germinder to build a new bot to compete in a series of games against other teams. 

Robotics is unique from a lot of other clubs because of just how student-run it is. 

“It's a great activity, being so student led. As a coach, I am mostly there to make sure you guys don't get hurt. A lot of the actual things that we do are led by the students themselves. If you come into it and you don’t know what you're doing, part of what we do is learning how to use the tools and how to actually build things” says Mr. Potter, coach of the robotics team.

“I came into robotics not knowing how to use a single power tool or really anything in that room, but through just going hands on with it and starting to do projects, you just kinda learn as you go," says Sean Pierucci, a team member who started last season.

The season starts with the Kickoff, where the competition for the year is announced. From there, the team begins to design our bot for the season. The requirements change from year to year, so each season is a new challenge. Last year, the bot (robot) went by the name of Rupert, and was designed with a rotating cube launcher to shoot blocks up onto platforms to score points. 

If you are interested in learning more about robotics, please reach out to  charlesgordon@csdok.org. The club provides experience in building, programming, business, and general team skills. 

Build team captain Alex Dugas put it well when he said “You get to build a robot, so it's fun”