North Hollywood Robotics, a student-run club, has been competing for 2 years in FR (first robotics competition). Their objective is to create a robot that can do complex tasks, depending on the game rules that change yearly. They made it to the world championships a few years ago, but sadly due to Covid the competition was canceled. 

With two of their competitions already done and many more to come, Noho Robo is hopefully securing a win for our school and winning a scholarship for prestigious colleges. 

Angel De Leon, an 11th grader and a member of the Robo club, comments on the competitions. “We already went into two competitions, but I’ve only been to one that was located at Ventura in Port Hueneme,” De Leon says. “It felt pretty great, but a bit stressful because we were procrastinating a bit, but we managed to pull it all together by Saturday to have a functional robot that can score points.”

Even though they didn’t secure a win for us in the previous competitions, the team is trying their best and working together to make the robots as great as possible, continuously making changes. 

Eman Castillo, the co-president of Husky Robotics, says, “The robot was worked on throughout several months, with new features being added and removed as needed.” 

Castillo elaborates, saying that “…the flywheel and roller mechanisms went through some notable changes: as for the flywheel, we had to swap out the motors a couple of times because of burnout, but thankfully it was more of an inconvenience rather than an actual problem.” 

With so many changes made to their robot over so many months, the pressure led to the reactions of teammates being different, with some being disappointed in their team effort and cooperation and others stating the group effort was great and they are proud of each other.

Ethan Nam, one of the senior members, says that the competition “…Could have gone better if I’m being honest, I was the driver for the team and a lot of little stuff just kept on piling up. The whole experience was frustrating and I was pretty bummed out, but I’m proud of the work that the new members have been putting in.” 

The prize for winning the competitions vary from a different area. One price is a scholarship that opens opportunities to some prestigious colleges like Harvey Mudd. Other prizes are championship trophies that are made from pieces used in the robots. 

Michael Wang, an 11th grader, said “It qualifies us for the VEX Worlds and would require us to defeat most of the other teams in a direct match. There’s no prize besides the trophy, we’re not looking for any monetary incentives.”

VEX, a college dedicated to VEX Robotics competitors, is a bit pricey to enter. The team has used super kits that cost around $1,900 and the registration for the season and events are a bit on the expensive side. However, the Noho Robotics team made a plan and has been able to fund it through grants they applied for in the past. 

With so many many bumps throughout their journey and mixed emotions, our Huskies won 5th place overall. North Hollywood’s robotics team is yet to give up, and will try harder for upcoming competitions.