by Frank Schroth

Last Sunday the Cunningham Collicot schools were swarming with excited students, harried volunteers, cool, calm and collected referees, and ROBOTS!

While many had their eyes turned toward the Super Bowl, there was just as fierce a competition taking place here in Milton at the qualifying First Tech Challenge (FTC) tournament. The Cunningham Collicot schools hosted this robotics competition for the second year and teams from as far away as Lawrence came to compete.

They arrived early to tune their bots and practice their moves. The competition involves building a remote controlled robot that can lift an object and deposit it into a container. It doesn’t look very easy. The FTC:

“.  .  . is designed for students in grades 7-12 to compete head to head, using a sports model. Teams are responsible for designing, building, and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams.”

You can learn more about the challenge here.