by Michelle Liu, managing editor
Tiger Robotics secured the first place award for their project engineering notebook at the Texas BEST Regional Robotics Championship on Saturday, Nov. 9.
“We’ve never won notebook before–it’s actually taken us 13 years to figure out the mystery of the engineering notebook,” sponsor and tech teacher Bart Taylor said. “Taking a fresh look at it and putting it back together in a way that makes sense–just the dedication of the people involved in the notebook was what it took [to win].”
The team is led by president senior Sarah Ann Porter, while senior Emily Miaou contributed to the win as the engineering notebook leader.
“It wasn’t too much trouble. A lot of it was that I had to get [the process of building the robot] down on paper,” Miaou said.
The notebook consists of five parts, each documenting a step in the creation of the robot: game analysis, brainstorming, design implementation, manufacturing and testing.
“Notebook kind of straddles the marketing and engineering–it’s mostly engineering, but it’s also a very large part of the marketing score [of the overall competition],” Porter said.
This year’s competition, named “Gatekeeper,” required that students build a robot that could “build a CPU. There were various representations of different aspects of the CPU that we had to score,” senior build leader Nathan Romo said.
But Tiger Robotics didn’t just take home a trophy–they’ve also already set in stone next year’s president (junior Pablo Leon), set goals for the next seven years (Tiger Robotics 20/20, which aims to expand the team, competitions and alumni network by the year 2020) and set their sights on yet another competition (VEX Robotics).
“That way we can expand some of the different things we do in robotics so it’s just not a fall event,” Taylor said. “A lot of robotics kids, after [BEST] competition’s over, they have this big empty feeling, and they’re like, “What do we do now?!” and they’re lost.”
Taylor, who recently received the Brazos Valley BEST Legacy Award, might be half-joking, but he’s certainly serious about the team he manages.
“Tiger Robotics is a phenomenal group of kids that volunteer their time and commitment and dedication to an extracurricular club and competition–that just blows me away,” Taylor said. “That’s what motivates me and inspires me to teach.”
