Ten years ago, the West Torrance Robotics Club was created on campus. Throughout the years, the club has expanded remarkably, providing students with a competitive environment that fosters leadership while teaching the basics of engineering such as design, manufacturing, programming, business, and public relations. This year, the Robotics Club anticipates cultivating a memorable one ahead of the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition.
Annually, a new game is internationally released for teams to interpret and devise plans for. The teams then have six weeks to fabricate, program, and advertise their brand before the four-day competition.
Engineering a robot that can execute a myriad of functions requires a lot of meticulous work across a variety of skill sets. Co-Captain of Technology and Lead of Finance Ishan Samarasinghe (12) delineated the different roles of each department of robotics. The teams that collaborate exclusively to finish the robot include the manufacturing, assembly, computer-aided design (CAD), programming, and electrical departments. Meanwhile, the auxiliary business team, captained by Kenta Saito (11), is responsible for public relations and advertising.
Every meeting constitutes a task and purpose for each division. The manufacturing and assembly teams are responsible for fabricating parts and piecing them onto the robot. The CAD team draws a three-dimensional model of the robot to calculate all of its exact measurements. The programming team encodes the robot’s functions, and the electrical team wires all the physical hardware to power the robot. Samarasinghe explained, “Although all the sub-teams work on their own, [the] unofficial team name of robotics is ‘We the People Robotics.’ So we bring all the divisions together and then all of us work as one.”
Once the competition day arrives, around forty teams bring their robots to the competition location and organize their materials in their designated areas. The first two days are for the teams to continually practice and ascertain that all of the mechanics of the robots are functioning. Shortly after, all of the teams participate in the qualifying matches, with each selected at random. In each match, a team is ranked by the points they score for completing objectives. On the final day, there is an alliance selection where the top eight ranking teams are allowed to choose two other teams to ally themselves with. From there, the winning alliances advance to the next stages of the competition.
Co-Captain of Technology Matthew McConnell (11) revealed that the 2023 season was a bit “rocky” since many seniors had left and a good chunk of members were first-time competitors. However, he is hopeful for this year’s competition because the program is “gaining back more numbers” of people. “Last year, we weren’t exactly sure how to do everything properly but this year, we’re feeling good. Our design is going well and looks very promising,” McConnell added. Strategy Leader of Manufacturing Arihan Joglekar (11) shared McConnell’s hopes for the upcoming season. Despite the loss of some graduates, Joglekar affirmed that “at the same time that people leave, other people step up and spread the knowledge they learned from previous years. This year we have some good members and the newer members seem very dedicated.”
Head of Programming Nhat (Jim) Nguyen (12), pointed out that because it’s the tenth anniversary of the program, “[The team] is really trying to achieve something.” Nguyen expressed that the team has worked extraordinarily hard to learn from past problems and has improved by “preparing earlier, prototyping more, staying on deadlines, and more driver practice for the robots.”
All in all, the West Torrance Robotics Club seems poised to be a strong contender in this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition, given their lengthy preparation. As they work to engineer their robot, they simultaneously grow together. As Samarasinghe put it: Robotics is all about “working together with other people, combining all of our ideas, and slapping it all into one robot.”
