This summer, the Benilde-St. Margaret’s Robotics team is taking a trip to Seoul, South Korea, to compete in the Robot World Cup Initiative. Starting as early as eighth grade, students have the opportunity to enter engineering classes. In their first year, they learn the basics, and as they move through their classes, they gain more artistic freedom. The final stop in the engineering classes is the robotics team. Students can become a member of the robotics team starting their junior or senior year. Throughout the entire school year, they prepare the robot to compete in the summer.
Every year, the RoboCup tournament is hosted at a different location, and BSM has always had the pleasure of attending. Last year, the team competed in Brazil, and every year, there is a new location. The BSM Robotics team is the only high school team in the nation to compete in this tournament, which means that they compete against grad-level students. “The skills they gain from being around people at a higher level of knowledge are what I view as the win,” engineering advisor Charles Nepomuceno said.
This year, the BSM Robotics team is building a robot to help search-and-rescue teams locate missing people. It’s not only a competition, but a robot that could help many people in unsafe situations, such as natural disasters. “It’s a search-and-rescue robot, so the part of RoboCup we’re in is called RoboCup search and rescue, and the whole goal is to design a robot that traverses simulated natural disasters,” Nepomucemo said.
The BSM team significantly improves every time it competes. Nepomuceno explains that he does not care where the team places, considering it’s a college-level competition. However, he admires how much the team has grown and how their abilities have shown through the project. “Every year has become my favorite because we take what we had that previous year and improve on it. I think we’re finally at a year where we’ve found all the improvements we want, and we have an all-in-one robot right now. So I’m super pumped, because this is the best robot we’ve brought,” Nepomucemo said.
The students create this robot themselves throughout the year. Junior Audrey Broglio has been in engineering since her freshman year, but she joined the Robotics team as a junior. The robotics team is split into 3 different sections: mechanical, programming, and electrical. Broglio is a part of the mechanics section. She helped design the hot pink arm on the robot that will help it navigate around items and locate victims. “I’m excited about the competition just to see how we do, because our robot is a lot better than it has been,” Broglio said.