The Hicksville High School robotics team,”J-Birds”, got to show off weeks of hard work recently at the regional robotics competition at Hofstra University. The J-Birds competed against both local and national teams in the “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”—or FIRST—regional robotics competition, placing 32 out of 50 teams.
The hard-working troop worked together to complete their robot within the six week timeframe provided, and brainstormed the best possible robot to build within the allowed time.
The teams played a game called Aerial Assist. The game is played by two competing alliances of three robots each on a flat 25’ x 54’ foot field. The objective was to score as many goals as possible during the 2 minute match. The more an alliance gets the ball in their goals, and the more they work together to do it, the more points they received.
Working together was a key role of competing in the regional game. Not only did the students earn points for working together, they showed fellowship with members of other teams. If any student needed a mechanical part, they would announce it over the speakers, and members from other teams would give their spare part to them.
Each student put effort into the large project, and the team agreed that’s what made making a robot from scratch fun and worth the labor.
The team was made up of Matthew Colasanti, Michelle Carlamustro, Peter Bell, Steven Metri, Danny Sloan, Ryan Noetzel, Nick Maineri, Catherine Temps, Tom Altamura, Armen Arsenian, Anish Kurmar, Shiv Chopra, Bryant Grey-Stewart, Amatullah Fatehi, Christina Claus, Resala Samadi, Ron Penkar, Tim Tietjan, Nitya Mulani, Kieran Murray, Steven Morea, Mathew Chhabra, Lorelie Hess and Tiffany Toledo.
