Last week the robotics team was busy preparing to go Cowtown Throwdown. This competition is a repeat of the previous building season to see what the teams can improve on from last years’ robot.

“We’re basically redoing what we did in the regional last year,” junior Sicheng Chen said. “It’s like a mini experience for new people like freshman’s people who never joined robotics.”

Plenty of maintenance was done over the past two weeks to create the new and improved version of last years robot. The past two weeks were a whirlwind of collaborative efforts between the five departments of the robotics team: mechanical, admin, programming, and electrical.

“We had to add another motor because the grabber need two motors, not one motor,” Jonathan Hoepner, junior, electrical head, said. “Something else we had to do was we had to take the electronics box off and relocate some of the electronics on there so mechanical could change the robot the way they needed to for Cowtown Throwdown.”

With so many people putting in all their efforts towards improving one robot, with so little time, the robotics team was working clear up to the night before they left for Cowtown Throwdown. Working down to the last minute is nothing new for the robotics team, as it’s not uncommon for them to be working on the robot in the middle of the competition too.

“Basically what this looks like is we have a pit setup and that’s all of our tools and all of our equipment and big tubs of all the things we might need,” robotics sponsor, Emma Detrixhe, said. “Between rounds from the second we get there at until our first round and in between every round kids are making constantly making improved months and tweaking things and and working on it. And so we just made a goal that every for every round something improved and even if those improvements were little we accomplish that goal.”

According to Detrixhe the robotics team took a smaller group to the competition this year, it actually turned into an advantage due to fewer idle hands. This particular group of students were diligent workers and worked well together to try and do well at Cowtown Throwdown.

“To me it doesn’t really matter how well we do as long as we learn something,” Alice Le said.