Team of Western Wayne, Honesdale students heads to world robotics competition

The robot zoomed across the floor at Honesdale High School, picking up orange rings called notes and spitting them into a wooden box called a speaker.

Students from Western Wayne and Honesdale high schools hope the robot can stand out among the best in the world.

The team built the robot this year and won the FIRST Mid-Atlantic Robotics Competition Regional Championship earlier this month. With the victory the team called the Camobots will compete at the world championship in Houston, Texas this week.

Teammates gathered Sunday at Honesdale High School, preparing for their trip. Jacob Schott, a senior from Western Wayne, said going to the competition is a dream.

“So for a lot of us being seniors, getting to go is like one last hurrah… it’s awesome,” he said.

The two schools came together 13 years ago to form the robotics team. As the emphasis on STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) grows, more schools offer robotics programs to students. Last year, 3,340 teams of high school students from 32 countries competed in FIRST robotics.

The teams receive specifications for the contest in January. Then, it’s time to work. With the assistance of sponsors, alumni and advisers from the community, the students design, build and program the robot to accomplish specific tasks. Nearly all of it is done outside of school hours, explained Calghen Downey, a senior from Honesdale High School.

Students may stay at school until 8 p.m. and then return for 10 or 11 hours on Saturday or Sunday.

Calghen wants to be a mechanical engineer. He said the long days of work are worth it.

“And then you get to see the end product and all that hard work that paid off,” he said. “I enjoy the challenge.”

Brian Landry teaches industrial arts at Western Wayne and advises the team.

“It’s not an easy competition at all. They have to figure this out from scratch… We put them also in situations that they might want to just learn electrical, but we force them to learn other trades so they can work together with it,” he said. “At the competition, they have to talk to CEOs and engineers of major corporations. They’re not used to talking to random strangers, but it works out really well. They build a lot of confidence with it. And it just gets them really prepared for the world that they’re going to work in.”

Photo courtesy of Camobots

With a sponsor’s help, the robot and the equipment necessary for possible repairs, is traveling via truck to Houston. Students will arrive to Houston on Tuesday and Wednesday.

After winning the regional championship at Lehigh University for the first time, the students knew their robot had international potential. Zoey Sollers-Fagan, a senior at Honesdale, hopes to feel the same sense of accomplishment this week.

“It was very exciting, very fun,” she said. “It was a lot of stress that went into winning and knowing that we can do it.”