The Perkins Robotics Club is in its sixth year of existence. The main goal of the club is to encourage students to think for themselves while working as a team to complete tasks.
The culminating event each year is the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots that weigh up to 125 pounds capable of competing in that year's game. The game objective changes each year and typically involves programming a robot to shoot or place balls into a receptacle.
This year, FIRST is focusing on reimagining the future of sustainable energy. In CHARGED UP, presented by Haas, teams are inspired to see the potential of energy storage in a new light as they compete to charge up their communities. Perkins Team #7165 has been tasked with designing, creating, and programming a robot to collect cones and inflatable cubes. These will then be placed into power grids. Click here for a game animation!
Over the past five years, we have created four robots and designed one idea for a FIRST competition game. In 2023, our team made it to the finals at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional Competition. This year, we have two upcoming events: The Miami Valley Regional, Cintas Center in Cincinnati, OH (Wednesday, March 15-Saturday, March 18) and the Greater Pittsburgh Regional in Pittsburgh, PA (Wednesday, April 5-Saturday, April 8)
We are also collaborating with Sierra Lobo to design and create a CubeSat to go into space. The CubeSat will be fairly small – about the size of small kitchen appliance – and have an electrical arm that will be controlled from a laptop. There will be a game involving small balls that the arm will grab and place in different locations inside of the satellite.
The hope is that the cubesat will be sent to the International Space Station then deployed into orbit from there. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate how something like this could be used to make repairs while in space.
Perkins Robotics Communication Documentation
Perkins Robotics Club On Social Media
Upcoming Events
- The Miami Valley Regional, Cintas Center in Cincinnati, OH (Wednesday, March 15-Saturday, March 18)
- The Greater Pittsburgh Regional in Pittsburgh, PA (Wednesday, April 5-Saturday, April 8)