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.
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.
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.
