A certain group of students spend their free time designing and building a robot that they will bring to competitions throughout a six week period. For the first time in six years, the RaileRobotics team claimed a regional victory.

“We are a part of FRC which is First Robotics Competition. Every year they release game for us to compete in and we have strictly six weeks to build a robot to compete in that game and that is when we go to competitions and compete against other robots,” sophomore head of the design team Gretchen Otter said.

The RaileRobotics team works on weekdays, weekends and teacher work days in order to create this robot.

“Those six weeks are a crazy time commitment, but that is what we have to do to get it done,” Otter said.

The team is organized in a way so that everyone on the team has a role in creating the finished robot.

“We have a captain, a project administrator and then we have four different subgroups. Those subgroups consist of the design team, who are the engineers. We have the controls team, who does programming and electronics. We have the machining team who machines parts for the team. We also have a team called M.A.C, they do media and communications,” senior RaileRobotics captain Colin Potluri said.

Potluri and Otter make practice a way for everyone to participate no matter their position.

“Gretchen and I try our hardest to encourage people to share their ideas, be present on the team, and still have a good time. Robotics is all about STEM education and them knowing the benefits of engineering and the process and how that could make them successful in the future,” Potluri said.