A team of students from Chatham-Kent is heading to Windsor to show off their robotics skills at the provincial level.
The CK Cyber Pack will compete against 29 high school teams from across Ontario at the Windsor-Essex FIRST Robotics Competition on Friday and Saturday.
The local team, made up of 11 local high school students and adult mentors, is a member of the non-profit group FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which has more than 3,000 teams and over 85,000 student members worldwide.
This weekend’s competition at the St. Denis Athletic & Community Centre is the second of two regional events, with the best teams moving on to the national level.
Bella Dickerson, a Grade 10 student from Chatham and member of the CK Cyber Pack, said her team’s robot will need to complete specific tasks, such as picking up and moving tubes and rubber balls, to earn points.
“Those balls are called algae and our bot picks up those algae balls. It has a big arm on the front of it that picks up the algae and it will put it into a dispenser,” she said.
Dickerson said programs such as these provide lessons in science, engineering, and technology, which are invaluable for those seeking a future career in those fields.
“In also every field you look into, you’re dealing with tech or something that involves you needing to use tech,” said Dickerson.
However, she wasn’t always sure it was the path for her.
“When I first joined this team, I wasn’t sure I’d stick with it because I’d only ever really seen men in technology-[related] fields, like building or engineering,” said Dickerson. “But the First Robotics community is not like that at all. There are people of all different sorts who are there and they’re a really welcoming community and it really shows me that I can get into the field if I want to and that I am capable of doing these things.”
For more information about the CK Cyber Pack, you can find the group on Facebook and Instagram.
