AJ Wolken staff writer
The robotics team made it to the big stage this year, recently attending the International Competition in Houston, Texas. While they didn’t bring home any big trophies, Mortorq won an impressive second place award for their safety equipment and procedures and learned a lot from their world-renowned competitors.
Last year’s game involved building a robot that could throw balls and climb a rope. This year’s task was slightly different.
“In the competition there were three scales at different heights and the objection was to place these cubes on the scales to weight them in your favor. Our objective was to intake these cubes and we elevated the cubes with an elevator to place them on the varying heights of the scales,” Jack Schmidt, co-president of the build team, explained.
Despite not placing in the competition, junior Alex Faraj was happy to have qualified for internationals and experience the International Competition atmosphere and intensity.
“It was cool being able to see all these different teams from all around the world coming to one place to compete with their different robots that they made,” Faraj said. “I am very glad that we got the chance to be able to play against some of the best teams internationally and showcase our talents to them as well. It was a fun experience and we learned a lot as a team.”
While it was a very successful year for Team 1515, Co-President Robert Sher is confident that there is room for improvement and that the team can make it even further next year.
“The team needs to be more organized and set a list of goals that they want to achieve rather than a vague idea if they want to get better. I am very proud of the team and what they have accomplished. This is the first year since my freshman year that we have qualified for the world championship and that’s a lot to be proud of,” Sher said.
Schmidt has seen huge improvement over the past few years and is very excited about the possibilities that lie in Team 1515’s future.
“We spent six weeks devoting our lives to building this robot and to see it perform at such a high level was impressive. In previous years our robots haven’t performed well but we have been improving enormously,” Schmidt said. “It feels great to have all our hard work pay off. I can’t wait to do it all again next year.”