Five feet tall. 113 pounds. A top speed of 15 mph. These statistics describe the robot constructed by Southern Lehigh’s own robotics team. Since January, the team worked hard to create a robot to compete in a challenge at the Hatboro-Horsham robotics event on February 27.

“Well it’s a two day long competition and a bunch of teams from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware basically compete against each other in a challenge that we got in January,” junior team vice-president Dominic Rubino said.

In January, all robotics teams are given the same challenge, and within six weeks the teams must build a robot capable of performing that task.

“We make a robot from scratch,” sophomore team member Daniel Qian said. “We have to connect the wheels, make a frame, and create a mechanism to lift stuff. We’re tasked with a different thing to do every year.”

The challenge this year was to create a robot that could pick up plastic shipping totes and make stacks out of them.

Southern Lehigh’s team, the SparTechs, competed in the Hatboro-Horsham event where placed 16th within their seat alliance, and eighth overall. Thirty-seven teams competed at this competition, part of Mid-Atlantic Robotics (MAR), which is a sub-program of FIRST that contains all of New Jersey, Delaware, and counties in Pennsylvania from Harrisburg eastward.

“One of our team goals for the past few years is to win a safety award, and I won that at the past competition,” junior safety captain Madison Anthony said.

The SparTechs won the Industrial Safety Award, sponsored by Underwriter Laboratories, for not only having a stringent safety program, but for also using creative and innovative ways to eliminate safety hazards.

”The main goal of the robotics team is to get kids working with engineers,” team coach Mr. Robert Gaugler said. “The secondary goal is to do well in the competitions.”

The robotics team usually competes in two major competitions and two minor competitions each year.

“I think next year we’d like to improve our placement,” Rubino said. “Also, to spread the FIRST message and try to get others involved in robotics.”

To join the robotics team, one only has to ask Mr.Gaugler in room 136. There are approximately 30 members so far.