Though they don’t compete on Sawyer or Galbraith fields, there is a robotics team here at Williston, and their work is quite impressive. All this effort paid off recently, when they made it to the Southern New England Regional Championships in early March.

Sixteen members make up the team led by seniors Kohmei Kadoya and Glede Wang. The robotics team meets five days a week at 3:30 p.m. in the Robotics Lab in the library basement, and is supervised by Mr. Poage and Ms. Lucia. They were ranked sixth out of 86 teams in the March skills competition.

Ten to 20 students participate in the robotics program annually, and compete against other prep schools, including Choate Rosemary Hall and Philips Exeter. The team made a robot this season that brought them to the regional competition. The robot was able to stack caps, shoot balls, and climb platforms.

Abby Dennin ’20, a member of the team, explained exactly what goes on in the program.

“We build robots and we program them, using the VEX Coding Studio,” she said. VEX Studio is an online program for coding.

She explained how they build the robot. “Every year there is a new game announced,” Abby said. “We come in at the beginning of the year and we talk about it for a while, and we break the robot down into sections.”

Abby continued, “The drive is the wheels. We designed the chassis, the body of the robot. Then we designed the shooter because we knew we needed to shoot balls. We designed the J lift because we knew we had to flip caps.” The J lift is the arm of the robot, it grips the caps and flips them over.

The entire process, she said, “is a lot of trial and error.”

Abby explained the details of robotics competitions.

“There is a different game ever year,” she said. “The company we do robotics with, VEX, has a game or tournament. The game this year was you have a minute and forty five seconds to flip caps and shoot balls. Whoever scores the most points wins, it is basically like any other sports game.”

She added, “There are two types, one is called ‘driver control.’ Mac, our driver, controls the robot. There is also ‘autonomous,’ which is where we write the program in advance, and we just push the button and hope for the best.”

Their license plate of the robot is 3157.

Abby told The Willistonian that the materials required to build a robot are very expensive and complicated. “There’s metal pieces, motors that are premade, axles, gears, chains, and wheels.

Abby wants people to know that everyone is welcome to join team. “It is really great for people to join even if they don’t have any experience with robotics. We are trying to branch out and not just have a very competition-focused team.”

Kohmei, a four year senior on the robotics team agreed with Abby. “I wish people knew that it is not as intimidating as it might seem,” he said. “With the new brains we brought this year, the barrier to entry has been significantly lowered, and we encourage everyone who has an interest to join next year.”

The robotics team is a chance where like-minded people get together to explore complex engineering.

Mac Kongsomjit ’21 told The Willistonian, “The constant sense of pressure and stake that everyone shares; it tells me people care about the success and failure of the team, and by extension that they care about the team.”

Jack Long ’20, a member on the team for three years, enjoys the “inclusive community where I can pursue my passion with people that share the same interests,” he said. “Robotics is the place where I’m willing to put in my best effort to contribute to our success.”

Jack told The Willistonian that his favorite part about the team is discussing how to make the robots do specific tasks. “[We discuss things] like make the robot open the door for us, make the robot bring us soda cans, make the robot clean up our work.”

One thing Jack emphasizes is he wants the robotics team to be more well known across campus; he feels because they are a non-athletic team on campus, they’re “often overshadowed by other sports teams.”

He continued, “People on campus do not know much about us aside from annual presentation during the assembly,” he said. “I really hope we can make ourselves known across campus and have more people join the team.”