The robotics team, in its third year, is ready for their upcoming FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) competition on March 10-12.

This year’s competition consists of a combination of medieval siege warfare and capture the flag.

“The game is called Stronghold. There are obstacles in the field that work as barricades between your team and the other team’s castle,” Jason Smith, robotics team sponsor, said. “Your robot has to traverse through all the different obstacles, like a portcullis [a type of gate] that opens and closes, a drawbridge, a moat, etc., to score points.”

The team was able to score 40 points in a row while practicing.

“We have a camera on our robot that helps us target, but if we had two more weeks to work on the robot, we would have it do it by itself,” Smith said. “We would make that more automatic… and make it more precise.”

The robot also has to be able to traverse obstacles that are anything from 16 inches tall to 6.5 feet tall.

“One of the biggest challenges we had was all the building we had to do,” Smith said. “We had to construct all the field pieces. All the field pieces themselves were 48 inches wide by anything from 10 inches off the ground to 6.5 feet tall, so there was a lot of constructing of just stuff to practice with.”

The robot was bagged and tagged on Feb. 23. They brought it out for Friday’s pep assembly, but the team is not allowed to do any work on it and can’t touch it until the day of the competition.

“We can shoot consistently when the robot is not moving,” Ben Smith, junior, said. “I think we are going to place above average at the competition.”