High School North’s “Royal Knights” competed at the New Jersey Regional Robotics Competition on March 2 to 4 at the Sovereign Bank Arena.
The students participated as a rookie team at the regionals. They were sponsored by NASA and mentored by the engineers at the Princeton Plasma Physics lab. Their school advisor is Morton Levine. The Royal Knights’ robot “SIR LANCE-A-BOT” finished as the second highest scoring rookie and out of the 63 participating teams, the Royal Knights ranked 28th overall.##M:[more]##
North’s team (1923) members included seniors: co-captains Derrick Yu and Vamsi Kodamasimham, Pransanth Tirachanur, Kavin Manickaraj, Rahul Modi, Ajay Mosur, and Balal Nadeen. Also juniors Paul Rua, Kay Mashettiwar, Vaudev Unni, and Naren Raghuraman; sophomores Naveen Kasthuri and Yuri Vishnevsky; and freshmen Libby Kamen, Katie Stevens, Michael Fishman, and Riley Simmons-Elder.
Participating teams receive a kit of parts and the teams must design, build, and program a robot that will conform to design specifications and perform the necessary challenges of the game in a six-week period. Each year the game changes — so each year a new robot is designed.
This year’s game was AIM HIGH, where the robots had to either shoot balls into a high goal or deliver the balls to a low goal and finish up on a ramp within a two-minute match. Each match is made up of six teams forming two alliances, but the alliances change with each match, giving the teams the opportunity to work with different alliances, and working together to earn the highest number points.
The final championships will be held at the Georgia Dome on April 26 to 28.
