A Q/A With Melrose's Young Masters of Robotics

Pictured: Alejandro Garber, Colin Bakey, Luke Hoffman, Bennett Kraunelis, at the VEX IQ Southern New England Championships, March 8 in Worcester

If movies and comic books have taught us anything, it’s that humanity will eventually be conquered and enslaved by robots (unless the zombies get us first). Fortunately, Melrose residents have been presented with a unique opportunity to get on the good side of their potential future oppressors.

Earlier this month, Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School’s VEX IQ robot building club triumphed in the VEX IQ Challenge Southern New England Championship, in which teams compete via setting their plastic VEX-kit ‘bots upon an assigned task. The win qualifies the squad for the World Championship tournament taking place April 15 through April 18 in Louisville, Kentucky.

However, turns out event registration isn’t free, and of course neither are travel expenses. Hence, the team has created a Gofundme page asking for some financial support from the community.

Patch called up team founders Alejandro Garber and Bennett Kraunelis, who began building Lego robots together at 7 years old. The pair of 6th graders seem like nice guys, don’t get us wrong. But if their robot building skills continue developing over the years, and they turn evil, it might help your chances of surviving the inevitable robot uprising if you can truthfully remind the robot army’s cyborg masters of that time you gave them a few bucks for their Kentucky trip.

The team’s also on Facebook and Twitter.

Patch: Okay, most importantly, why should the people of Melrose donate to your Gofundme? How do you plan to make Melrose proud?

Alejandro Garber: Well, as you may have already heard, we made it to the World Championship in Kentucky, and that’ll be kind of expensive, so we could use some help with sponsors and publicity. We were the first robotics team in Melrose, and Melrose would kind of have the title of World Champion if we win.

Did Iron Man influence you to get into building robots?

Bennett Kraunelis: He’s awesome. He’s, like, my favorite superhero.

AG: Tony Stark, the billionaire guy - He’s an inventor, which we are also. We invented a robot to solve a problem in limited space, with limited height, and limited kinds of pieces.

What do you make of Ultron? Tony Stark built him [in the movies, not the comics, of course] but then he turned evil…

AG: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think our robot is going to go on a rampage, get a bunch of laser guns, and start blowing things up. I mean, robots can be dangerous. We do VEX IQ. With the real VEX, you have to wear safety goggles, because the metal pieces can go flying. VEX IQs are plastic. But we still wear safety goggles because they’re cool.

Have you been able to use your robot building cred to impress girls?

AG: Not yet, no.

BK: I think they like the hockey players and stuff like that more.

AG: Wait ‘till we win the World Championship.

Not to be a jerk, but I’ve got to ask - are any of your parents a big time engineer, or maybe a failed engineer?

AG: Here’s the thing - I was inspired by my dad, who mentors the Robotics Team for Boston University Academy. [Full disclosure, he also teaches engineering].

BK: He helps us stay on task. We build the robot, and he just makes sure we don’t get on with our random conversations.

AG: Let’s take a sports team, right? You have a team captain, but you also have a coach. The coach is in charge, and he helps out, but he doesn’t do the actual playing.

Do you guys foresee yourselves doing similar work when you get older?

AG: I don’t really know. I don’t really know what I want to do when I grow up. I just want to go with the flow, and let my career come to me, and not chase a career.

BK: But I think robotics and technology and things like that are the best way to go, really, nowadays. That’s what everybody wants - new technology.

AG: Like the iPhone. I mean, just wait for another 20 or 30 years, and they’ll have C-3POs and R2-D2s.

Assuming you become masters of robots when you’re adults, do you think you’ll program your robots for good or evil?

AG: Well, ruling the world with a giant evil army of robots sounds fun.

BK: Like...we could have robots, and tell them, “Go fetch me some lunch!” or something.

AG: Have you seen “Big Hero 6”?

No, but I’ve heard of it. He’s a balloon robot of some kind?

BK: He’s a healthcare robot.

Hm, but would you build an evil robot - like the T-1000 - if you felt like you had a good reason?

AG: Yeah, I don’t know. Temping, the Dark Side....Now I see why Anakin went with it…