PROGRESS: The Poly Robotics Club hopes to defeat societal stereotypes and expand its program by attracting both male and female participants.
By Martina Krakora, Staff Writer
The Poly Robotics Club began its robotics competition season January 3. More than ten robotics teams arrived at Poly’s Little Theater that morning to listen to a presentation about the upcoming competition and then proceeded to room 803 where they each picked a robotics kit, which contained all the materials they were allowed to use to build their robot, such as wires, body pieces, etc. After the Poly robotics team received its robot kit, they took “an inventory of what [they] had received in the kit and [started] brainstorming for the competition,” Poly chemistry teacher and Robotics Club advisor Mr. John Gifford said. The team has six weeks to build its robot before displaying it to the judges at the competition.
Gifford is optimistic about this year’s competition and is looking to expand the program. Usually, the program only attracts “a few students at most who come to design, build, test and program [the] robot,” Gifford explained. He is especially looking to attract female members to the club. Recently, Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Arizona, took the nation by a storm when its all-girls robotics team beat out MIT to win the National Robotics Competition and demolished stereotypes about women in the field of robotics. This team completely changed female involvement in robotics by placing girls in “all aspects of robot construction and operation,” according to The Verge journalist Joshua Davis.
Gifford hopes not only to attract more people to the club, but to challenge stereotypes about women in the field of robotics, just as the Arizona team did. He believes that with more hands and brains, the team could go very far. He encourages students, parents and teachers to come out to the competition in order to garner support for the current team and encourage students to join. “When you go, you will see that robotics is much larger and much deeper than anything you could possibly have imagined,” Gifford said.