Students at Hastings Secondary College are feeling on top of the world after securing a spot at the First Robotics Competition in Houston, Texas, for the second year in a row.
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The team, which only started competing in 2017, is having a dream run, winning the judges wildcard to go back to the United States, at the Asia Pacific regional competition, in Sydney from March 11-13.
Team member, and student at Westport Campus, Luke Aguilar, said the dream run was not without hard work.
“We are so excited that we could get the wildcard entry to the First Robotics Competition in Texas after competing in Sydney and doing really well,” Luke said.
“After last years’ efforts we have been working extremely hard to make sure we had the best robot we could, but I think it is worth it knowing we will be going back to Texas in just a few weeks.”
After three days of competing, the team were in the alliance that ended up coming second.
“In the competition, there were 30 teams and all the parts of our team did really well, so we ended up being the captains of the alliance who came second which we are really proud of,” he said.
Hannah Stewart, another member of the team, from Port Macquarie Campus, who specialises in statistics, said the best part of the whole competition was crunching the numbers to find out which teams they should alliance with.
“The competition is set up so you have to make alliances with other teams in order to win, and my favourite part was going through the numbers to work out who we should form an alliance with,” Hannah said.
“I think we are all working really well together and I think that showed at the competition because we eventually won the wildcard prize.”
Luke, a member of the robotics team who traveled to Houston in 2017, said that if he is chosen to go back to the United States, he will be looking forward to catching up with the friends they made last time.
“The competition in Texas will be the same as it was in Sydney, but instead of 30 teams we will be competing against 800 teams, so it will be on a much bigger scale,” he said.
“We already know the challenges so if I get to go back to Texas I am looking forward to seeing all the different kinds of robots and how the other teams approach the challenges.
“It will also be fun to meet up with the people we made friends with last year.”
Read more: Students ready to rule at robotics
