A part of the clubs Edison High School has to offer, the Robotics team at Edison High School uses students’ engineering and cognitive abilities to construct robots to compete in the First Tech Robotics Challenge (FTC). The newly renewed club now operates under the name “Team Faraday”. 

In the past, most of the building process would take place in the school, but due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team had to take alternative measures to continue competing. The team operates primarily through Zoom and the online platform Discord for communication. In order to construct the robot, team members met in small groups to minimize risk of infection.

Specifically, the robot’s structure is a structural chassis with motion parts such as axles, gears, and motors. Programming the robot remained the same as past years—code sharing occurring on an online platform. Furthermore, members of the team also used Fusion 360 for Computer Aided Design to create certain components of the robot. 

This year, the club grew significantly from its past attempts at building a successful robot. Captain Pranav Chundi ‘22 spoke about the program’s faults from last year and this year’s growth. “Unlike the previous years where EHS robotics has never gotten past making a functioning robot, this year has been different. This year we built our own FTC field and tested the robot with the code every step of the way. Such testing and proactive building/coding allowed the team to assemble a fully functional robot that put us in the state championship,” said Chundi. 

Additionally, Devam Mondal ‘24 discussed his learnings from this year and his experience as a freshman. “With Team Faraday, I was able to learn its [programming’s] applications in machinery and robotics. Ishan, our mentor who is a Computer Science major in Georgia Tech, has proven to be a very good teacher,” said Mondal.

Regarding the future of the club, the Team has qualified for the state tournament after several qualifying meets. Additionally, the members of Team Faraday hope to set up outreach to the general school population as well as the middle schoolers coming to Edison High School.. As of now, the majority of the team are juniors, so the team wants to train members for next year’s program. The team also plans to start a program to reach out to the middle schools and prepare students for entering robotics in high school. Overall, the team has high expectations regarding its future.