Hewlett High School raises a ruckus over robotics

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In Room 234 of Hewlett High school — and occasionally on the floor outside of Room 234 — more than 60 students and Robotics Club coach Janine Torresson spend six hours every Friday thinking, building and tinkering.

Torresson oversees three teams — Bionica, Innovo and Roboboogie — that compete in For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST, Tech Challenge competitions for middle school and high school students. Each team has 15 members. FIRST is a nonprofit organization based in Manchester, N.H., that supports science-oriented educational competitions for kindergarten through 12th-grade students.

Following strict rules and under a six-week time limit, the teams raise money, design team brands and build and program industrial-sized robots to accomplish specific tasks in competition. The FIRST competition mission for 2019 is the space-themed Rover Ruckus, in which robots will “land” on Mars and be required to collect assorted items.


The students are highly motivated, said Torresson, the Discovery program teacher at Hewlett Elementary School who is in her fourth year of guiding the robotics teams. “They expect it of themselves,” she said, noting that all three teams advanced to regional competition in 2017 and 2018.

A wide range of skills are needed to build a robot, from coding to fundraising to artistry. Roboboogie programmer Michael Green said he likes coding. “It’s all about making [the robot] do cool things,” said the junior, who has been involved with the club for two years. “You’re using the binary code language to do what you want.”

Senior Aditi Dam, who has been with the club for three years, is a member of Bionica, the all-girls team that has inspired more female students to get involved in robotics. She has also run a Girls Who Code summer class for younger students. “Coding gives life to the robot,” she said.

When Bharvi Chavre got involved in robotics as an eighth-grader at Woodmere Middle School, there were no other girls in the club, she said. In high school she joined Bionica, initially doing business and community outreach. Now she dabbles in every function, including building. “I really enjoyed the aspect of coming together to build a robot,” said the senior captain, a four-year member. In recent years, college graduates Eddie Cerverizzo and David Murphy, who met robotics students at the Arts Below Sunrise Festival in October 2017, have helped the programmers.

Being part of robotics isn’t just about science. Students also learn how to connect with the business community to raise money to purchase the supplies they need to build the robots. “You learn to communicate with business professionals, and you have to be persuasive,” said junior Gina Carrillo, Roboboogie’s treasurer, adding that the team raised $2,300 through 2018.

To help support the club, Bionica is selling a small pin adorned with the words Hewlett Robotics and two gears for $1 in the high school. Adult volunteers, such as Hewlett-Woodmere Business Association President David Friedman and First Vice President John Roblin, have offered the students advice on fundraising.

The robotics calendar is divided into four parts: build and practice season, mainly in the fall; qualifying season, in the winter; state and regional championships, also in the winter; and the world championships, in April. To maintain a successful program, apprentice students are brought on each year based on tryouts. Engineers have to know CAD and Java software, community-outreach students need to be knowledgeable about business plans, and artists must submit portfolios. The students do the choosing. “When I first joined robotics I was an artist,” said senior Andrea Valero, who has been a member of Bionica for three years, “and ultimately I became an engineer.”

“It’s about making a quality product and being organized,” said senior Dominic Russo, a Roboboogie captain and a builder in his fourth year in the club, who designed the course for an elementary-school-level CAD class. “You can assemble your own robot,” he added when asked what he likes about robotics.

Junior Gaby Badu, who is her second year of community outreach for Innovo, said she likes talking about and stimulating interest in robotics and STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math. “I like doing outreach, reaching out and raising awareness of STEAM,” she said. “Sometimes we do classes for the younger students.”

Innovo builder Eddy Maday, a junior, said that many lessons his peers are doing in school are learned by rote, but robotics shakes things up and pushes the students. “We learn different things, and I like that,” said the third-year member. “It’s incredible, and after all the work, it actually works.”

Torresson noted that the students are “motivated when they feel recognized and valued.”

For all the competition, pressure and technology, there is also a tremendous amount of camaraderie. Students get together at one another’s homes to tinker and improve the robots. “Science and coding is a big part of it, but how close everyone is is amazing,” Carrillo said. “It’s like a family, and we have so much fun.”