Robotics Extravaganza 2023 Follow-up

  Are Robots awesome? You bet! On April 15, 2023, the SCBL held its 5th Robotics Extravaganza.  Over 287 people attended the show brought to you by the efforts of the San Carlos Branch Library’s Managing Librarian, David Ege, 10 Navajo Robotics teams (75 team members were present), and the Fire Department’ Bomb Squad.  The event was sponsored by the San Carlos Friends of the Library and the Henry Cluster STEMM Foundation. We thank all who attended to make this such a fun event, and the 6 members of the PATRIBOTS who volunteered their time & muscle on the day of the event.

Why Robots ? They are the first stepping stone to teaching our youth engineering and design skills for the future.  Plus it requires team work and robotic competitions are as exciting as your favorite sport.  We encourage you to look into the robotic club at your school.  Youth can begin building Lego robots and continue on through high school challenges.

We wish to spotlight this year’s PHHS team, the PATRIBOTS (FRC 4738), mentored by PHHS engineering teacher Andria Van Loan.  They qualified for the world finals this year. Three days after our Extravaganza, the 20+ member team traveled to the First World Championship Robotics Competition in Houston, TX, to compete against 600 teams. They won 4th place out of the 78 teams in their division.  Eleven teams competed from San Diego; PHHS was the only team from SD Unified.  They are only the 2nd SD team to ever make it to the final round.  The PATRIBOT robot was also awarded the Imagery Award for its design.