FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
Andy Marafino
Bishop Montgomery High School
5430 Torrance Blvd.
Torrance, CA 9050
Torrance (January 19, 2012): This school year marked the debut of a new, exciting club on the Bishop Montgomery campus, The Robotics Club, or as they are affectionately known, The Robo-Knights. The club, moderated by chemistry and physics teacher John Sansalone, was designed to attract talented students with various skills to create, design and build a task specific robot. One of Sansalone’s main objectives with the club is to introduce the students to one of the most important careers of the now and the future. “The types of skill sets that we seek and foster,” explains Sansalone, “are computer programming (like LEGO Mind Storm, C Plus …) and designing (like CAD …), structural engineering and design, detailed record keeping (written & photographic), document interpreting, and fundraising.
The primary goal of the Robotics Club in this first year was to design and build a robot to compete in the US First Robotics competition – First Tech Challenge (FTC) division. “My hopes were that we could build a robot that would be able to move around on game day in December,” explains Sansalone. After attending a “kick-off” event at Monrovia High School, the club was ready to get to work on the ideas that were already generating throughout the club members.
With months of work in the rear-view mirror, the club, made up of 12 students, was ready for the LA County Region game day in Monrovia in December where each team would compete in five rounds. “Our team produced a good, functioning robot that was competitive,” explains Sansalone. “Unfortunately, we had an unforeseen design flaw that made our robot uncompetitive for three of the rounds; we made adjustments and did well in the other two rounds.” When the competition concluded, the BMHS team finished 16th out of 19 teams in their arena. “Not bad for a first year team, considering some other first year teams were unable to get a functioning robot ready for game day,” explains Sansalone. “So I would consider this a successful first year.”
The Robo-Knights are seeking donations to help off-set the costs of building robots and entering future competitions. Visit the Robotics Club webpage at www.bmhs-la.org for more information and to view pictures and video of their work.
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