SLICE Robotics won fourth place at the State Competition on April 6, which means that they qualified for the world championship in Houston, TX. They also won the Imagery Award during their last competition, which recognized the vision of the SLICE Robotics Club and their values.
Sophomore Logan Baker said, “This award to us means that our design process has been really good. Continuing next year, we’re going to follow the same principles called by us for the world championship.”
SLICE has been active at FVHS for four years now and have gone to the world championship three times with a 75 percent success rate.
Baker said, “The robot is named S.S. Squeeze because of our chant; Slice, Slice and Squeeze. It has to score two game pieces of pvc pipe and a giant kickball. In order to do this, we have an elevator that moves up and down to about seven feet tall and shoots pvc pipe onto it.”
The company that hosts the competitions creates the games each year, and students make a new robot that will complete those tasks. The practice field in the SLICE room must be taken down and rebuilt every year.
Baker said, “We’re definitely really excited [for the competition]. It’s a fun time, but it involves a lot of hard work because between every competition, robots get better and better. We have to make a lot of improvements to stay competitive for Worlds.”
SLICE constantly improves as they continue to learn. Students get to learn leadership and coding too.
Baker said, “I joined my freshman year. It was mainly friends and family that have been in the club before that got me in. I’ve stayed just because the community has been really good. It’s helped me grow as a person. My confidence has gotten better. Beyond SLICE, it’s something to grow my leadership skills, and it’s just learning new things everyday.”
SLICE is working on the S.S. Squeeze to make it ready for Worlds. They are working on lots of driver practice, redesigning, and a lot of code testing. The world competition will be April 16-19.
