TCS Robotics Team at Florida Competition

The Columbus School Robotic¨s team with the Colombian Innovation Program (CIP) team, participated in the First Robotics Competition (FRC) in the South Florida regional.

The First Robotics Competition was from March 27th to April 2nd and is a competition held in different parts of the USA where each region has more than sixty teams from around the world. After receiving the challenge, the robotics team have to complete the robot and send it to the USA so they can participate in the competition.

“In January we receive the challenge, which is basically what the competition will be about, and we have six weeks to complete the robot and sent it to The United States so we can participate in the South Florida regional,” Julian Zuñiga, Columbus School teacher and mentor of CIP, said.

The Colombian Innovation Program team has more than fifty students from different schools who work together to build the robot that was used in competition.

“The team has more than fifty student from schools like Montessori, Marymount, San Jose de las Vegas, La Enseñanza, Colombo Britanico and The Columbus School. All students go and build the robot that is with which we participate,” Zuñiga said.

Last year, the second time the team participated in the competition, the team finished in third place in the South Florida regional which was a big accomplishment to the team. They didn’t do so well this year since they finished forty five out of the sixty teams that participated.

“This year it was rather regular because we had problems with the robot in the competition because one of the parts of the robot broke because it crashed into a barrier so we had to improvise and make a piece to replace it,” Zuñiga said.

The team will be attending next year competition with the goal of redeeming and improving previous mistakes so they can be prepared for any possible outcome.

“Obviously we want to return, we had some failures because we had some problems with time and with some mentors and we learned that it is very important to have plans and designs before building so we avoid any failures due to lack of planning,” Agustin Jaramillo, 11th grade student and CIP team member, said.

The experience that the competition leaves help students improve in many real-life situations and also brings them a lot of future opportunities.

“For the students it is an experience where they realize what’s done in real life. It is an application of mathematics, engineering, science and it helps them by bringing many opportunities for their future,” Zuñiga said.