The MVHS campus was empty, the rally court dark and quiet. Only one room was crowded and rowdy, bright beams of light piercing the darkness of the rally court: room F107, where members of MVRT were hard at work, discussing with their teams and drawing sketches of their robots on paper.

Every year more newcomers decide to join this competitive team. To first-year member sophomore Deelia Wang, MVRT is a place where she can expand her knowledge of computer science and work with others.

“[My group and I] learned how to prototype things,” Wang said. “So you have to have a pro and con list, and what your top priorities are for your robot. I actually learned that designing things is really hard for robots because you need to consider all the conditions that need to be met.”

In CS, when we do coding, you’re not coding actual things for real situations, you’re just doing hypothetical things, like a bank account. I really wanted to do Robotics because I wanted to code for something that actually exists.

In order to accomplish each group’s goal of creating a robot, several requirements must be met. The measurements have to be very precise, the coding has to be correct and the robot has to complete a certain task that differs each year. This can sometimes be a challenge, especially for a newcomer like freshman Matthew Yuen.

“[Right now] we’re working on building a climber robot,” Yuen said. “Sometimes it’s difficult, you need to be able to help the robot climb without it falling or breaking or getting its weight unbalanced.”

Yuen’s main purpose of joining Robotics was to learn how to code and create functioning robotics. However, for second-year member sophomore Chelina Wong, MVRT is more than building robots and planning designs. When she’s with her fellow teammates, Wong feels as if she is part of another community.

“Just the sense of comradeship, we’re all a team, it’s like a second family,” Wong said. “You really like everyone, and they want you back [on the team the next year]. You want to see the new games, and you want to do the build season all over again.”

From the long hours to the difficult designing, the members of MVRT persevere through each challenge, continuing their work to make their competition season a success.