- By Karina Burbank
- Around Town
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After a successful crowdfunding campaign with an amazing amount of help from the Ithaca community, Code Red Robotics is headed to World Championships this weekend to compete with their robot.
Code Red Robotics is a student-led robotics team from Ithaca High School. Under the guidance of teachers and community mentors, Code Red members have an opportunity to learn about technology, engineering, leadership, and more. Code Red Robotics is a team within the world-wide organization known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).
Each year, along with 3,000 other high school FIRST teams, Code Red builds a robot to compete in a game-like challenge. This year's challenge included acquiring gears and placing them on pegs, shooting wiffle-balls into goals for points, and catching a hanging rope and climbing about five feet in the air.
In March, the team and their robot won a regional competition in Suffern, NY, which qualified them for World Championships in St. Louis this weekend, April 26-29. The Ithaca community and local business showed enthusiasm, helping the team raise the funds necessary for the trip through a successful crowdfunding campaign, including dollar-for-dollar matching up to $5,000 by Code Red Robotics sponsor, Rheonix. Code Red also recieved support from local organizations and sponsors such as IPEI, IthacaSTEM Advocates, Ithaca High School, Vector Magnetics, BorgWarner, and more.
Now, the team is getting ready for World Championships, where their robot will compete against other high-level robots from around the world.
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