Our SOF HS Robotics team, SOF RC, participated in the citywide qualifier of the First Tech Challenge competition on January 26 at Horace Mann school in the Bronx.
The following SOF students participated in the challenge: Evan Kharlamb, 10th grader and new team leader, Dylan Foler, 10th grader, Angelo Suarez and Ringo Valdes, freshmen, Dylan Joseph, 11th grader and the seniors Ronan Schneider and Milan Jevremov.
For this year’s challenge, our team designed and built a light and fast robot with an arm that picked up and moved custom 8 by 4 inches blocks on a special platform.
Each team competed in a pair format during five games where an alliance partner in one game could be an opponent in the other. Unfortunately, during all of our games, our alliance partners had technical difficulties which prevented them from using their robot to function well in the field. Our SOF team managed to win one game and tied another when playing against an alliance of two teams with two functioning robots.
For next year, our team plans to get ready for multiple scenarios both in a team and individually in order to overcome difficulties that our alliance partners may have.
Our students had fun and performed well in their role in the team on a long day packed with activities. They practiced various engineering skills including documenting their journey in an engineering notebook as well as presenting their work to a panel of judges consisting of engineers, teachers and parents. Go SOF RC!

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