Picatinny STEM- sponsored robotics teams showcase brilliance at World Championships

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - Nine teams all under the purview of the Picatinny STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program qualified for the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship in Houston between Wednesday, April 29 and Saturday, May 2.

Operated by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Armaments Center, the Picatinny STEM program is the largest sponsor in the entire Department of War. It provides sponsorship and mentorship for 93 different robotics teams from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 49 of which were First Robotics Competition (FRC) squads. The Picatinny-sponsored teams stood their own and showed their brilliance in a pool of 600 squads, all of whom represented the highest echelons of high school robotics.

Of the nine, Team 1403, Cougar Robotics of Montgomery Township High School in Skillman, had perhaps the best championship run, winning the FIRST Impact Award in the Mid-Atlantic district – possibly the greatest honor in robotics besides first place – and being one of six finalists for the award on championship level.

Teams 1676, the Pascack Pi-oneers, Pascack Valley Regional High School District, Montvale, and 341, Miss Daisy, Wissahickon High School, Ambler, Pa., were playoff contenders in their respective divisions. Teams 11, M.O.R.T., Mount Olive High School, Flanders, 3314, Mechanical Mustangs, Clifton High School, Clifton, and 2607, The Fighting RoboVikings, Archbishop Wood High School, Warminster, Pa. all made it to division playoffs. Teams 303 (The T.E.S.T Team, Bridgewater-Raritan High School, Bridgewater), 334 (TechKnights, Brooklyn Technical High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.), and 8513 (Sisters 1st, Villa Walsh Academy, Morristown) were contenders, but did not advance past qualifying.

To support these teams, four Armaments Center mentors traveled to Houston: Luisa Palacio Zapata and Alex Rydzewski (Team 8513), Owen Keegan (Team 11), and Dominic Estanislao, who spent the event primarily assisting Team 3314. While they did not make the trip to Texas this year, mentors Hailey Atwater, Warren Venema, Mark Maselli, and Daniela Gonzalez were also vital to the success of this qualifying group.

Team 8513 finished second in New Jersey this year and earned an award at every competition they took part in this season. According to Zapata and Rydzewski, the girls were excellent problem solvers under pressure, even tearing down their robot and rebuilding it in a few days and going through several design iterations. Team 8513’s programmers thrived, especially in programming the robot’s autonomous features, the manufacturing squad adjusted smoothly to changes, and the designers too performed well with minimal mistakes.

The pair, who both work as mechanical engineers, especially noted Team 8513’s ingenuity to replicate the quality usually reserved for high-end machinery. They expressed hope that the girls will thrive and motivate more of their peers to join robotics – the field has grown more accessible and welcoming to girls in recent years, but still robotics is a niche interest for them.

Estanislao, also a mechanical engineer by trade, praised how frequently his team and others collaborate and share ideas even when competing. Team 3314, he added, performed a complete rebuild of their robot in two weeks, opposed to the usual six to eight.

“My students are all driven and motivated to build a competitive robot every year, and that rubs off on me because I want to also compete at a high level. As a student, you just build robots, but as a mentor, you soon realize that building the robot is ultimately a tool to build my students as people,” he said.

For project engineer Keegan, helping out with Team 11 brings him back to where he graduated high school, Mount Olive. The M.O.R.T. team, he emphasized, is entirely student-driven, with students managing everything from technical builds to non-technical community outreach. M.O.R.T. also scrapped and rebuilt their robot as a strategic pivot, which ultimately secured them their playoff run in Houston.