The Winter Soldiers are a robotics team that is not affiliated with the Pleasant Valley robotics team, although most of the members attend PV. This year on February 23, they won state for the First Tech Challenge inspire award.
The First Tech Challenge is a robotics competition with two main components and one focus. The first component is the robot competition; the second is called Outreach. The challenge’s focus is to allow all kids to learn life skills through robotics. The judges look at both components to decide who wins the first place. For 2019, it was the Winter Soldiers.
Photo of Varun Vedula (left) and Rishab Verma (right) working on the Winter Soldiers’ robot, Black Widow.
For the robot competition, teams must design, build, and program a robot to complete a particular task. This year, the robot’s mission was to pick up wiffle balls and cubes and return them to a basket, all while navigating rough terrain. Although this may seem simple, the task was very complicated. The Soldiers’ robot, Black Widow, had to be able to lift itself up onto a ledge while still impressing the judges with its design.
This year, the Winter Soldiers tried to focus on Outreach. Outreach is when a robotics team helps their community and other countries in the world. The Winter Soldiers did three main things since their last challenge. Their first was helping to create a robotics team at Rock Island High School. This service showed their outreach in the community.
For the world portion, the Winter Soldiers help a group of kids in two different countries. The first project they did was working with two different teams in India. Varun Vedula and Guilherme (Gui) Pinho traveled to India. Pinho said, “Traveling to India was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in high school.”
They also collaborated with a group of kids in Russia, but they were unable to send them a robot kit because of customs. The Winter Soldiers had to communicate with the Russian team and build the robot for them. In both cases, there was a language barrier, but the shared appreciation of learning and the excitement of robotics allowed both groups to get over this barrier.
The combination of the Winter Soldiers’ wonderfully designed robot and outstanding work in the outreach program pushed them to first place at the state competition. Looking back on the year, Gui said, “I am lucky, to be a part of such robotics team.”
“Winning was a really great opportunity for us,” said freshman Lily Dumas. “It was nice to know that all the work we did paid off.” Winning state also means that the team will be traveling to the World Competition in Detroit, Michigan at the end of April.
