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Health & Fitness

Robotics Team Boasts Brains and Creativity

If you’re someone who thinks “robotics” means little or no creativity, strategy, or skill, then you haven’t witnessed an FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) Robotics event.  Indeed, on Saturday (Nov. 9), 19 very skillful teams gathered to inaugurate the first competition of the 2013-1014 season at Barrington High School. 

Teams from Barrington, Highland Park and Ottawa high schools met in a scrimmage --not an official tournament. 

“This is a chance for all the teams today to see how far they’ve come since they started planning, designing and building their robots at the beginning of the school year,” Barrington High School’s Coach Tom Bredemeier noted.  “In fact, many of the robots that teams brought to the event are still just early season ‘works-in-progress.’  So, today they had an opportunity to see how their designs stack up and plan their strategies going forward.”

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As for the “creativity” component of such competitions, consider this.  Names of the teams competing included “Robot To The Knee,” “Beastie Bots,” “Girls Gone Wired,” “Ctrl-Alt-Delete,” “Mechanicalicious Aardvarks” and “No, We Don’t.”  That last name became the official name of the team when members were asked recently if they yet had a name for their team.

The answer was “No, We Don’t.” 

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So, it stuck.

Add “clever” to what comes to mind next time someone describes “robotics” to you.

Information and photos from Gary Schmitz.

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