Sharon robotics team advances to West Coast championship event

The Sharon Tiger Techs Robotics Team has advanced to the Western Edge Invitational championship event in Long Beach, California following an appearance at the Pennsylvania FIRST LEGO League Competition.

The Tiger Techs competed against 36 Pennsylvania robotics teams and received one of the highest honors in the form of the Third Place Champions Award earning them the title of number one public/private school team in the state.

The team will now advance to the Western Edge Invitational held in Long Beach, California from May 30 to June 1 where they will compete against some of the highest performing robotics teams from around the world.

Over the past nine months, the team designed, built and programmed a LEGO Spike Prime robot to compete on a thematic playing field.

This season's theme was "Submerged" challenging teams to program a robot autonomously for a two-and-a-half minute period to complete tasks related to the theme of ocean exploration.

These tasks included raising the mast of a ship, delivering sea creatures on the field, sending a submersible across the field and more. Robots had to complete 15 missions on the field.

Additionally, the team developed an innovative project solution to address a problem related to the topic of of ocean exploration.

The team learned that scuba divers can be distracted from monitoring important safety data such as air supply.

The team spoke with experts in the scuba industry and multiple end users of scuba equipment and developed the Scuba Processor Auditory Link, otherwise known as the "Scuba PAL," which is an auditory scuba diving transmitter.

The robotics team is in its 15th season and is part of the FIRST LEGO League organization. The team consists of students ranging from fourth to ninth grade in the Sharon City School District.