Their Engineering Skills Paid Off
Newtown High School’s Robotics Team 1635 brought back to their Elmhurst campus the first-place prize they won in the New York City U.S. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) regional competition on Mar. 18 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
Competing against 65 other teams, including some of the city’s most prestigious high schools, the team-also known as “The Technotics”- finished on the first place alliance after two days of intense competition.
This season, Newtown’s Technotics worked tirelessly to design, construct and program their robot, which was built to score as many points as possible. The robot was designed with a special drive train that enabled it to climb and balance competitively.
The final matches at the competition were won by an alliance between the Technotics, the Nutrons Team 125 from Massachusetts and the Robo Wizards, team 522 from Staten Island.
The Technotics earned the privilege to choose between the two teams to form the winning alliance after a series of challenging elimination matches.
US FIRST, founded in 1989 to inspire the interest of young people in science and technology, is a 501(c)3 non-profit charity. NASA collaborates with FIRST to design a new robotics competition annually.
This year, robots competed to sink foam basketballs into hoops at three different levels, climb barriers and balance on teetering ramp-like structures.
