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For each of my four years at Torrey Pines, I have been involved in their entirely student-run Botball Robotics club. Botball is a robotics competition in which robots are designed to complete certain tasks for points, such as sorting colored objects or stacking them. Although I was originally considering doing FIRST robotics, I learned that Botball's strict regulations on part pieces allowed for a more fair and challenging competition.
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Botball is a great blend of teamwork, software, hardware, and documentation skills that is both entertaining and educational. Although there are part limitations, there is still a lot of room to be creative. For example, because we only are allowed two Botball processing units, most teams only had two robots; however, one year, we discovered that iRobots can hold a small amount of memory themselves and uploaded a simple program into it that allowed us to have 3 functional robots. Of course, teamwork and coordination are extremely important as well in order to discuss, improve, or reject ideas. The club has around 30 members.
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In my freshman year, our team managed to place 1st at the Regional Botball competition in San Diego and were offered a free trip to GCER (which we unfortunately could not attend). The following year, we placed 3rd due to missing documentation issues. Last year, our team placed 2nd. This year, I am the captain of the Botball Robotics club at Torrey Pines, and I am aiming to get 1st at the regional competition this year.