South Jersey High School To Compete In Robotics State Championship This Weekend
By Cleve Bryan
CHERRY HILL, N.J., (CBS) -- A local high school is keeping up with technology and having some fun at the same time.
What began six years ago as two students working on a science project has grown into one of Cherry Hill East High School's most popular student activities - the Robotics Club.
With 80 members, the club is bigger than just about every sports team and crushes the competition. This Sunday they'll host the state championships for VEX Robotics and look to compete in the World Championships for the fourth year in a row.
"There's very few rules that we have so all the robots that you see here are not like made from a kit, they're all made from our imagination and what we think will best compete against other teams," said Cherry Hill East student Jason Fisch.
This year's competition is about shooting foam balls in a three-foot high net and it can take more than 100 hours to build a robot.
"The robot has three sub-systems: the drive, the intake and the launcher. The drive is what propels the robot along the field, the intake is able to intake the balls and the launcher shoots the balls out into a goal," said Cherry Hill East High Student Nikola Kosaric.
When everything is ready the competition goes something like this.
Each one of these robots is controlled by a team of students and they work together to achieve an objective. This is called "nothing but net" so you've got your perimeter shooters like basketball and then you've got your power forward rebounding and then putting in the lay ups.
"Well you may have heard the buzz word STEM, stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics and basically that is the epitome of education and robotics has components of all those," said math teacher and Robotics Club advisor Joe Dilks.
Dilks says it's easy for schools to launch their own Robotics Club and the benefits can be life-changing.
"After learning how to build and operate them it's really set me up for what I want to do in my life. I've decided I want to go to school for engineering," said Cherry Hill East student Sofia Benedetto.
But first - hitting nothing but net this weekend. The VEX Robotics NJ State Championship is at Cherry Hill East from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. with 42 teams competing.