Making a robot sounds pretty cool right? Why not make a robot that can do things like pick objects up and climb a rope. Well that is just what is being done in Manhattan High School Robotics club. The team led by senior Stephanie Wu is all about a hands on student based approach.

“We kind of have a little bit of a hands off approach to the sponsorship we make sure the kids have all of the tools and equipments they need, we write grants, we work on fundraisers, but for the most part the kids are completely in charge of building the robots”

Mrs. Detrixhe an adult sponsor of the club stated.

The team did a great job with their station at Freshman on the Hill which has shown in the numbers of students, specifically freshman, appearing to be interested in the club.

“We did have quite a few freshman show up at our informational meeting and I think that that’s because we had a pretty positive presence at Freshman on the Hill “ mentioned Mrs. Detrixhe. The numbers of freshman this year appear to have started high then years in the past. They cannot know for sure how many of them will stay in the club though. Sometimes students find it difficult to be in robotics, especially freshman. Robotics takes a pretty big and serious time commitment and sometimes that deters the freshman because they often can’t get a ride or are a little more overwhelmed with it being their first year of highschool but the hope is that they are able to make the commitment and stick with the team.

With the amount of students in the club hopefully starting higher they have a system set up so everyone gets a chance to do some work on what they are interested in. This system consists of four different sub teams the first is the administrative subteam. They do things like marketing, making posters, recruiting new kids and coming up with fundraisers.

“They get together this pretty phenomenal fundraiser packet for all of our donors so that they know what they are donating to basically but the marketing element of it is really interesting” stated Mrs. Detrixhe. The next is the electrical subteam they are in charge of all the wiring and and soldering. The mechanical sub team is the one that is actually in charge of building the robot itself. Finally we have the programming subteam they use JAVA to program everything the robot will need to be able to do.  

In order to figure out which subteam each person is on they take a survey over some skills they might use in different subteams and write which subteam they would like as their first, second, etc. The survey tells the leaders what subteam each individual would best fit with. If someone would prefer a certain subteam it is always possible to make that happen. The experience level can range from knowing a lot about a subteam to knowing next to nothing. If the latter is encountered an upperclassmen would be paired with that student to help guide them through what is needed.

Many competitions take place through an organization called FIRST Robotics. We are very fortunate to be able to be a part of the FIRST Robotics organization thanks to the fundraising and donors that pitch in.

“It’s a pretty expensive endeavor so not all the schools can have the resources to do that and we are lucky enough that we have donors and a school that supports it “

Stated Mrs.Detrixhe

 Aside from the FIRST Robotics competitions MHS attends two main competitions. First is one at the end of October and that is called the Cow Town Throwdown, during this the students take last year’s set up and run their robots through it. Next is the one in January, a new theme is assigned and the team finds out their parameters of the new game. The game style changes every year so they will be doing a completely different set of tasks with the robot.  The next big event is regionals. They will be given a 6 week building season before they go to Kansas City for the competition.

Robotics is a very hands on club that will take a lot of time commitment and effort. Many activities will be offered to appeal to many different interests. All the students will get their own opportunities to make something happen. In Robotics every opinion matters. If doing something involved with technology interests any student at all then robotics would be a good club to consider being a part of.