On February 16th, The RHS robotics team competed in Skills USA at Spring Field College and placed first and second in mobile robotics, and first and third in Urban and Search Rescue.

“I am extremely proud especially the ones that have advanced to state competition I have every reason to think will do well in the state competition they have a lot of time and effort into their robot training,” Morales said.

Skills USA is a job skills competition designed to train and allow students to compete in a competition that involves 94 different job skills some of the job skills that have competitions for are culinary arts, photography, robotics, automotive, welding and more.

The Robotics team prepared for this competition researching industry robots and designing the robot then writing everything down in an engineering notebook and preparing a resume and presentation for the judges.

“It was a good learning experience you learn about the stress what we have a job and also know how to deal with stress around you and how to solve problem first hand,” senior Conner Bremer said.

The Urban search and rescue robot was designed with a camera on board. The students had to drive the robot looking at a video monitor similar to what police use. It is entirely remote control operated and had to be driven into a house, where the had to find three objects called ordinance, including fake bombs.

The team is currently preparing for state by combining both the urban search and rescue and mobile robotics robots together.

“It actually took less than a day and once we have some minor tweaking, it started working fine, it’s our second lead with this robot,” senior Jack Ramirez.

In the past, the team usually has two teams who compete at state every year but this year they have only one team going which is going to be a different dynamic than they are used to.

“As of right now I believe we have a pretty good chance of placing at state – it’s all gonna come down to who shows up and who has what prepared,” Metzinger said.