Students at Churchland High are designing a special athletic robot to participate in the regional FIRST Robotics Competition. About 50 students from Wilson, Churchland and I.C. Norcom high schools will be designing the robots this year.
The Royal Robotics Club team will be participating for the second time in the regional FIRST Robotics Competition. Students are preparing for the tournament to be held in April at Richmond.
The battery powered robot designed by students at Churchland High is 9-foot tall and weighs 127 pounds. The robot’s movements can be controlled and tracked using a wireless device that communicates using a computer.
During the competition, the robots will be actively involved in a game called LogoMotion where teams are expected to program the robots to hang plastic inner tubes in the shape of a triangle, square and circle on pegs of a tall metal rack. Teams score points based on their robots ability to place the objects higher and to form the FIRST logo with the tubes. Teams are also expected to create and deploy a mini robot, which must be capable of climbing a pole within the final seconds of the game.
Students of the Portsmouth team used a garage door pulley to serve as an extendable arm for the robot. Students also guided the machine by using the Xbox 360 game controllers.