One of the most fun and unique teams at OHS is the robotics team. This season looks a lot different from past years for the robotics team. The pandemic has caused many changes for the season. They are not able to meet in person as much as before. Unlike most teams at the high school who are able to compete face to face with their opponents, the robotics team is unable to.

This season looks a lot different from past years for the robotics team. The pandemic has caused many changes for the season. They are not able to meet in person as much as before. Unlike most teams at the high school who are able to compete face to face with their opponents, the robotics team is unable to. Instead of competing at competitions around the state all competitions are virtual and are done in the OHS basement. They mark the playing field with tape, set up the challenges, and submit videos of their robot completing the task. Junior member Dylan Meiners said, “You get around six weeks to build a robot from the ground up to be able to efficiently and reliably play the season’s game. A team competes with dozens of teams from around the state. If a team wins a regional, they get to go to nationals. If a team win nationals, they get to compete in the world competition.”

Being on the Robotics Team takes a lot of skills that other teams don’t use. Senior Robotics Member Nic Pilcher said, “A creative mind and patience–things go wrong, and developing clever solutions to fix problems rapidly is critical to success.”

This season, the robot’s task to achieve includes collecting game pieces off of the playing field automatically, navigating an obstacle course as quickly as possible and launching the game pieces into a basketball hoop of sorts as accurately as can be.

The team has from April 4 -April 30 to send in the video of the robot completing various tasks. Once the video is sent in and other teams send their video in they will be judged.