Kent-Meridian Robotics team pleased with season’s outcome

For the first time in its six-year history, Kent-Meridian High School’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Team 3221 team qualified for the district championship.

Out of 64 teams from the Pacific Northwest, Kent-Meridian finished 33rd at the Pacific Northwest District Championship in Cheney last month. Kent-Meridian qualified for the championship based on its performance at district events at Auburn Mountainview and Auburn high schools earlier this year.

Rob Green, the team’s adviser, said he is pleased with the outcome of the season.

“They (the students) should be proud of themselves because they did it,” Green said. “Our robot did exactly what we wanted. We never thought it was the best.”

He attributed the team’s success this year to the students’ experience. The team had about 15 students.

“A lot of the kids have been doing it for three or four years,” he said. “As they have built more robots, they have done better it at.”

The students spent a couple of hours after school each day and most weekends for six weeks working on their robot.

This year’s competition, called Recycle Rush, simulated litter recycling and pickup. Teams were required to navigate their robots to pick up packing totes and stack them. The more totes they could gather and stack in two minutes the more points teams earned.

Nick Boyce, adviser of Kentridge’s robotics team, said that although his team didn’t qualify for the district championship, students were pleased with their robot.

“The mentors and I thought the kids did an amazing job,” Boyce said.

The team’s robot was named Kryptonite, because it was very tall and green, one of Kentridge’s school colors, Boyce said.

Now with the competition season over, Boyce said, the robotics club is teaching elementary school students about robotics and talking to local fire and rescue teams about prototyping a rescue robot.