Royal Robotics team photo 2023
When robotics competition season starts, the Royal Robotics team meets in room 140 every day after school and on Saturdays to build a robot that will complete the challenge.
Mr. Marriner started being the mentor/sponsor of the robotics team seven years ago in Fall of 2016. When asked who originally started the robotics team he said, “The person that started it was Darren Moore; he was teaching at Norcom. After that it came over here and Danielle Morgan was the teacher who was sponsoring the club before I got here.”
Mr. Marriner has the robotics team set up like a democracy. Before competition season started, a team vote took place to decide on a president. The winner of the election, senior Ray Clause.
Even though Clause didn’t originally show much interest in the position of president, he was unanimously voted in. Clause joined the team as a freshman and is finishing his last year at Churchland High still in the club. I asked him what it is like to be the president of the robotics team and what he thought it entails and he said, “I show up, y'all ask me questions and I answer those questions to the best of my ability.”
When working on the robot Clause said that he didn't have a main focus. Instead he bounced around from different projects. He originally started working on the swerve but then it was decided to not use a swerve drive and to just stick to a tank drive. But, Clause is the one of the people that the team counts on the most. Not only as president, but also as the driver of the robot. He’s the one that controls the robot on where it goes and what it picks up.
With all the parts that go into making a working and functioning robot, there are small teams that build those parts so they can get the robot done in a timely manner. Samiya Young, a junior, joined the team at the start of the 2022-2023 school year. She focused on the lift system of the robot and anything else that needed help getting done.
The Robotics team made it into the semi-finals at the competition held at Churchland High School. In one of the battles, the two other robots that were allied with Royal Robotics didn’t have enough power to move their robots and the Royal Robotics team won that match solo. While some people doubt the ability of the Robotics team and think it’s easy to do what they are doing. They have yet to see the work that these people put into making the robot.
Photo credit: FRC volunteer