PDCMS Robotics Dominates Conference

A team of six students from placed second in an alliance match at a national robotics conference in Anaheim earlier this month.

The Global Conference on Educational Robotics from around the globe from July 9-13, according to Reggie Clark, the robotics teacher at PDCMS.

The winning team included the only girl from PDCMS to compete at the conference, Cassie Bija, as well as her teammates Hank Eylicio, Ernie Folie, Nick Bozick, Jagdeep Deol and Parker Robinson, who is a mentor from .

Their robot acted up during the double elimination round the previous day, even though it placed first at regionals in San Diego earlier this year, Clark said.

The students and Botball organizers worked on the robot, fixing it in time for the alliance match with Red Mountain Middle School.

"We’re able to help iron some things out and the robot went back to being the robot we all know that won the regionals,'' Clark said.

Alliance matches pair teams from different schools and regions to compete cooperatively in an effort to score as many points as possible with robots from both teams.

Three other teams scored well in the alliance matches as well.

Several students also wrote papers and presented them at the conference, including:

• Angelo Camargo, A Galaxy of Programming
• Kyle Okamoto, C Programming
• George Gregos-Mourginakis, Wireshell KISS-C Tutorials
• Noah Landers, Building Techniques
• Andrew Camargo, Robot Design
• Jonah Eadie, My Time in Botball
• Cassie Bija, Botball and Girls

Other students presented showcases that night for other teams to see, including:

• Ernie Folie and Alexander Lopez, Botball Angry Birds
• Grant Swajian, Exploring Mars
• Adam Wojnar and Itender Badesha, The Future of Automobiles
• Jacob Gilbert, How a good team works
• Hank Eylicio, How to build
• Al Lopez, Inspiration
• Ernie Folie, My Botball Experience
• Max Sternlieb, Project NoRM
• Sky Lander, Robotics
• Nick Bozick, Robotics in Agriculture
• Jagdeep Deol, Robots in Botball-Keep it simple
• Dakota Johnson, The Real Iron Man Suit