(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A group of Chicago high school students heads to Texas next week to take part in a different kind of contest: a robotics competition.
Taft High School’s Robotics Team has designed and built a robot named Monkey, so named because it can hang from monkey bars and throw an 11.5-inch diameter ball up to 30 feet.
Chemistry and robotics teacher Tony Schmidt coaches the team.
“Not everybody can go pro in sports and a big component of First Robotics is this idea that everybody can go pro in anything that they’re doing as part of the program,” he said.
Schmidt said Monkey weighs in at about 150 pounds, is about 3 feet wide and long and can be up to five feet tall when extending its “arms.”
Taft High School junior and team captain Yehansa Dissanayake said since joining the team during the pandemic, she’s really gotten into robotics.
“I really liked math at the time and I knew I wanted to go into engineering, and I’m like, let’s just give it a try and then I joined and it’s like, ‘Whoa! This is amazing,’” she said.
Taft High School senior and team member Jyn Li called robotics really cool but strange.
She’ll be going to Columbia College next fall on a full scholarship for student game design.
“There was always, in my mind, one set way to do things, one set system, but robotics has shown me that there’s more than just one solution.”
Taft’s team will be among 500 teams from the U.S. and across the globe.
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