It seems like something from the future, not attainable by high school students. They have six weeks to build one robot. It needs to be able to shoot frisbees, pick more up, and then climb to the top of a tower. There is a small kit of parts to get started, but ultimately the materials are up to the team to be able to purchase. Westminster FIRST robotics team is ready to dive head first into their second competition, appropriately named Ultimate Ascent with all sections of the team doing their part to make it to the FIRST Championships featuring teams from all around the world.

FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The goal of the program, founded by Woodie Flowers, is to inspire young people to get involved in the scientific community. Westminster has only recently become involved in the program that began in 1992.

Last year was the Cyborgcats’ first year as a team. It started as a thought in the minds of curious      young students, but it was made possible by a $6,500 grant from a parent working at Boeing. From there, the team went far in last years season winning the Rookie All Star award. It is the best award a rookie team can win, and that ultimately took them to the World’s competition. This year the team would like to grow even more.

“My goal is to make sure that what we learned last year is communicated to the upcoming team members. Our stem program is still growing, and I believe that the team can become exponentially better from this point. Of course we will also try to win this year as well,” said David Hartmann, senior.

This year the team is focusing on growing and learning from last year to complete the complex game requirements. On Jan. 6 2013, there was an all-day meeting that kicked off the season. It began with a video streaming from NASA that explained only the outlining details of the game. The actual manual was extensive, including many rules and guidelines about the game.

The announcement thus kicked off the planning, strategies and long days of work to build the perfect robot. The team is not all about the engineering though. There are many different small teams that make up the large group.

There is a drive team that figures out how to move the robot, a scoring team to figure out just how the robot is going to score points, as well as programmers, and engineers. There is also a PR, public relations, team broken into to other smaller categories that is responsible for writing letters to sponsors, taking pictures, documenting what the other groups are doing, writing essays to win awards to get to the Championship, and running the website.

“I am a programmer on our robotics team. I tell the robot what to do and how to react when we control it. For instance, when we move a joystick, it moves the way it does because we told it how to react when the joystick moves a certain way. Otherwise, moving a joystick wouldn’t do anything to the robot,” said Hartmann.

His part of the team is just one portion of the whole. The Westminster Robotics team strives to bring a love of science to more students and building a community where students can express their creativity as well as take part in a learning opportunity. Ultimately that is what the FIRST program is for, but WCA’s team brings something unique to the table as a team that not only expresses a love for science, but also aims to encourage selflessness and encourages the team to come before the individual.

Regionals are coming up, and the team is in full swing ready to do their absolute best and not only come up with the best robot, but also the best game strategy. The Cyborgcats are ready to hit the arena.