Hillsborough RoboRaiders Unveil 2012 Robot

After six weeks of building, designing, wiring and programming its robot for this year’s competition, the Hillsborough RoboRaiders proudly held its shipping event on Tuesday in conjunction with its sister team from Ewing.

The RoboRaiders, otherwise known as FIRST Team 75, teamed up with Ewing’s Mighty Monkey Wrenches FIRST Team 2016 during a dual presentation held at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products in Skillman.

“This is an event here today to celebrate our accomplishments for the two J&J teams, to celebrate what we’ve done over the past six weeks and to show our robots to our whole teams, family and friends before it goes to competitions in a couple weeks,” said Lauren Rothman, president of FIRST Team 75 and a student at Hillsborough High School.

Both teams in attendance were giving friends, family members, mentors and other supporters a sneak peak at the robots that will be competing in this year’s basketball-influenced game, Rebound Rumble, before packing them away for competition.

“Today’s the day that all teams have to bag and tag their robots, meaning we put them in big plastic bag, zip-tied and dated to make sure every team across the world gets the same amount of time to work on their robots,” Rothman said.

Ben Romano, one of the student leaders of the RoboRaiders, explained that separate design and strategy departments came up with a model that can shoot baskets before balancing on a bridge at the conclusion of the competition.

“It’s a shooter mechanism, kind of like a pitching machine, that’s able to pick up the balls off the floor and shoot them into the baskets, and then it balances on the bridge at the end of the game,” Romano said.

The students on FIRST Team 75 are involved in a growing program that began at Hillsborough High School in the mid-90s. Many of the students, like the group’s Non-Technical Vice President Misha Desai, came to be involved based on being introduced to robotics at a young age.

“I became involved through my obsession with NASA,” Desai said. “I used to watch the NASA television channel all the time, so when I saw this on the broadcast, they were broadcasting the championships and I knew I wanted to join.”

Johnson & Johnson sponsors both teams through the FIRST program. The goal of FIRST, which stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”, is to educate students and give them life skills to become the engineers and scientists of tomorrow.

Khiro Sanchez, an employee of Johnson & Johnson who serves as a mentor to the RoboRaiders, is proud to see how far the kids have come during the six-week creation process.

“It holds special significance to me because, not only am I an employee of Johnson & Johnson, but I’m also a resident of Hillsborough,” Sanchez said. “Not only am I a mentor, but I see these kids at the store and, really, the best part of being a mentor is to be able to sit with these kids and watch them have their moments of brightness when they figure out a challenge themselves.”

Many parents in attendance, including Debbie Boyea, were equally as proud of all involved.

“It’s wonderful to be here to see the efforts the kids have put in over the six-week period,” Boyea said. “There’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of time and effort put in, not only on the part of the students, but the mentors and the parents. It’s nice to be together to see their efforts come to fruition.”

Regardless of how far they go during the course of competition, the students are taking skills learned in the robotics program at Hillsborough High forward into the future, following an experience that typically exceeds everyone’s expectations.

“I always say that it’s not about why you joined, but it’s why you stayed. You come in thinking it’s a robotics team, and you come out knowing so much more than you could ever think about in the beginning,” Romano said. “You really learn so much in the program that you have a new understanding of what you’re trying to do as you enter and leave.”