Archive: Around Town

Code Red Robotics, the Ithaca High School robotics team, is competing in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. Annually a new game is released and the team enters a six-week build season to build a robot for competition.

During the summer months, the team's focus has been community service and outreach. As a team, students participated in numerous robot demonstrations at locations such as Caroline Elementary School and the Sciencenter, where they were able to demonstrate their robot to the broader Ithaca community. Additionally, Code Red volunteered at events including AIDS Ride for Life, Taughannock Falls State Park, and the Cayuga Triathlon. Individually, members were able to help the community by volunteering with organizations like the Sciencenter, Tompkins County Habitat for Humanity, Cornell University, other IHS clubs, and the SPCA.

When the new school year began, Code Red Robotics welcomed over a dozen new students onto the team, and continued with community service and outreach. Following team feedback from last year, all team members are now required to volunteer 24 hours per year, spread out over five cycles. So far, this new system has amounted to over 1,000 hours of community service logged by the team.

The Community Outreach Officer is Sophia Ferwerda, a senior at LACS; she has done extensive work to organize volunteering opportunities.

"The community contributes so much to our group, so it's important to give back to them." Sophia said about volunteering hours.

President Sara Xin, an IHS senior, says "Code Red is trying hard to promote STEM in the community." She also says that "the team is not only about building better robots, but also better people."

Over the past few months, Code Red meetings have been aimed at teaching rookie members about our design process for robots. These meetings are intended to prepare for Code Red's 'build season'. New members and some veteran members attended Ra Cha Cha Ruckus on October 26th, a regional competition hosted in Rochester, where all teams use last year's robot and compete following last year's game rules. This experience helps new members understand the spirit and competition of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). They can also get to know other teams in the area, and work hands-on with last year's robot.

On Saturday, January 4th, with kickoff Code Red Robotics transitioned into build season. FIRST released the rules for the new FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) game Infinite Recharge. At kickoff, Code Red members familiarized themselves with the game rules and began to strategize. In the next 6 weeks, the team will design, prototype, and test their robot. Competitions will begin in March.

Currently, Code Red Robotics is lead by seven officers elected last spring. The officer team is consisted of President is senior Sara Xin, Build Team Manager Emily Klaben, Community Outreach Officer Sophia Ferwerda, Public Relations Officer Andrew McCracken, Treasurer sophomore Albert Sun, Team Administrator Perrin Woods, and Safety Officer Gabriel Halabi. The Safety Officer was recently added to the officer team this year after discussion of improving safety awareness and procedures within the team.

v16i2
v16i2