A Season Of Firsts For John Jay's Innovative Robotics Program

CROSS RIVER, NY — The future we were promised as children included flying cars and robots that could do nearly anything.

The students at the John Jay High School robotics labs can't help much with the flying cars (yet), but when it comes to getting robots to do the near-impossible, these teams are as sharp as they are competitive. The future looks both bright and diverse.

From the Katonah-Lewisboro School District

Students in the robotics lab at John Jay High School gather around utility tables by function, their high-tech tools a counterpoint to the jam music from another era that fills the room. The coders focus on laptops, finessing the robots’ autonomous code. Builders group at other tables: one team straightens their robot’s webcam, the other attaches a new 3D-printed funnel to their robot’s grabber.

It’s the final week before John Jay’s four robotics teams — Mechanical Operations Bureau (the MOB), Super Monkey Robo Team (SMRT), Super Awesome Robot (SAR) and Tin Diesel — compete in the John Jay Robot Rumble on Saturday. It’s their first robotics competition of the 2022-23 season and the first home event that John Jay High School’s robotics program has hosted.

But that’s not the only milestone the program is celebrating. This is the first year that female participation has hit 20 percent.

"In the past, it has been one or two female students per year," said Jonathan Peter, the school’s robotics teacher. The program is growing from a more diverse base in Computer Science 1 and 2—the prerequisite for robotics.

"The presence of women in STEM is awesome!" said senior Rachel Lewis, a member of the MOB which includes as many girls as boys. "I'm looking forward to increased representation in the future. All our female members except me are juniors, so we will have great veterans to teach the team next year."

At the John Jay Robot Rumble, high school robotics teams from the Edgemont, Ossining, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, Wappingers and Warwick School Districts will compete in autonomous and driver-controlled objectives. The friendly competition is a warm-up for the Peekskill Qualifier on January 14, 2023, which sends winners to NY Excelsior Regional MVCC Championship at Mohawk Valley Community College, Utica, in March 2023.

Last summer, John Jay’s growing robotics program received a $12,000 grant from the Gene Haas Foundation. The robotics competitions are part of FIRST Tech Challenge, through which students in grades 7–12 design, build and program robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams.