Proud of our Rookie FIRST Robotics Team

It has been an amazing process to see 14 high school students, primarily freshmen and sophomores, come together for the first time to build a robot. As we sat in the Kickoff presentation and watched the game being revealed, the whole team felt a sense if panic. "Frisbees? How will we be able to create a robot that can pick up and shoot frisbees?" But they did research and shared ideas and talked to veteran teams for guidance. "Deciding what part of the game to develop the robot for is everything", said Casey Zakis, a 9th grade student from Peters Township High School. "You have to have a goal. "

We decided to build our robot to be able to shoot through any goal on the field from a distance of at least 40 feet. We also wanted it to be tall enough to avoid having our shots blocked by other robots. Our robot is tall, probably the tallest one we have seen. But it does shoot from across the field and has a shooting deck that can move to adjust the angle and height of the frisbees. We call the robot "Atlas" after the Titan namesake, and it truly does look like our robot is holding up the world! We were thrilled to win the ROOKIE INSPIRATION AWARD at the FIRST 2013 Pittsburgh Regional Competition on March 15-16th because our team has worked hard to obtain sponsorship and develop an image that will be visible and fun. Learn more about FIRST at www.usfirst.org.

Our team is actively seeking new team members from the Upper St. Clair area. We plan to teach what we have learned this year about programming, electrical wiring, and mechanical building to younger students in the South Hills of Pittsburgh through a robotics workshop and the startup of a FIRST Tech Challenge team which we will mentor. Many thanks to our team sponsors: Comcast, The National Network of Digital Schools and PA Cyber Charter School, the Ironworkers Union #3, Tyco Electronics, Argosy, and the Peters Township Public Library. Visit our website at www.creativelearning-PT.org.