Oakmont’s robotics club, which was founded earlier this school year, is making waves as the underdog in competitions at Placer Advanced Robotics Team (PART), a Placer County organization for robotics. 

“The first time we went, we’d only been building the robots for a few weeks,” Alexander Wurden, the advisor for robotics club said. “One had the brain, battery pack, and antennae held on by rubber bands and got programmed in the car ride over, and the other was held together with duct tape.”

Nonetheless, Oakmont’s robotics team was able to score more points than many of the fancier-looking robots. They were placed in the middle of the standings by the end of the competition.

Robotics competitions consist of a game called Spin Up. In this game, the robots from each team compete to score the most points using foam disks laid out on the arena. Each round begins with an autonomous period that lasts 15 seconds, followed by a driver-controlled period that lasts one minute and 45 seconds. At the end of the round, there are also points given for the amount of tiles the robot covers. Whichever team has the most points wins.

There are two teams in Oakmont’s robotics club: team A, featuring sophomore Xavier Royer as the leader, and team B, led and driven by sophomore Brodie Muse. Sophomore John Carlson is the president of the club. 

“The main part of our club is designing and creating a robot that completes the tasks for the competition,” Royer said. “As the leader of the team, I mainly delegate tasks to ensure that we meet our goals for the competitions. I also work on both the hardware and software of the robot.”

The club is open to anyone who wants to participate in robotics, even if they don’t know much about it yet.

“We are not worried about how much you know, we are here for fun and to learn about something that we are interested in,” Muse said.

Competitions at PART happen every month and consist of teams from schools around the district competing with student-built robots. The local season at PART will end in January, but that won’t stop the club from continuing. 

“We have two more rounds this year still to go, and it seems like the local season ends in January,” Wurden said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll stop the club though; we’ll probably keep building and practicing internally since we’re so new and need all the experience we can get.”

Although competition season will end soon, the robotics team are sure to bond over their shared passions for ingenuity in the meantime.

“I had always found interest in engineering and building,” Carlson said. “I [want] to help this new club grow so that more students who enjoy engineering [can] join and feel included in the Oakmont community.”

If you are on the fence about joining Robotics, give it a shot! Everyone will be more than happy to help those passionate about engineering learn more and make meaningful memories together as a team.

“There are more right ways than wrong ways to get the parts to fit together,” Wurden said. “Well, no, that’s not true, but if you try something that doesn’t work, you can always take it right back apart and try again. Good engineers fail fast.”