At the stroke of midnight, the Roobotics team sealed its robot in a plastic bag and signed off that it was officially ending the “build” season, as required by FIRST Robotics Competition rules. Chief of Technology John Rison said that it had been an ambitious and hectic season, as Upper School students and mentors created a robot that will compete in this year’s “Stronghold” event. The teams had only six weeks to design, build and program robots to meet complicated engineering challenges. The robots, coupled with human players, have to be able to breach the outer works of a castle, overcome other obstacles and toss “boulders” into a medieval tower’s window.Here’s a video that explains it in more detail.

John thanked Upper School Math Teacher Wayne Kurtz, alum Ben Hollinger ’15 and a new mentor this year, Miko Wright, for their time, good humor and commitment to helping the students work together to create what John called our best robot yet! The team’s first competition will be held at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy on March 19 and 20, and a second will be at Westtown School on April 2 and 3. These two events will determine if AFS advances to the regionals and possibly the worlds in St. Louis. “We hope to have a crowd of fans at our two local events this year,” John said.