In an effort to attract new club members, the Ladue robotics hosted a robotics demonstration during lunch, Jan. 10.

“The main purpose was just to raise awareness of robotics and what we do,” junior Hannah Scott-Ravikumar said. “We spend a lot of time in the mechanics area and wood shop I think a lot of people just don’t really know what goes on there. … We’re hoping to raise awareness and get people interested in this.”

The demonstration attracted attention from a number of students, including freshman Will Gerding, who participated in the robotics demonstration.

“I knew about it and I always thought it sounded cool but I never really understood what they did, and I think it’s good that I got to see it today, because I think I might want to go and try it out,” Gerding said. “I want to build my own robot.”

With the help of science teachers Sweeney LaBarge and Ted Waterson, practical arts teacher Steve Schmidt, and librarian Michelle Schmitt, the robotics team designed and built the mini-robots on display. Now that the mini-robot competition has concluded, the team will focus on constructing a larger robot in the coming weeks.

“We’re currently in build season, which means we’ve been given a challenge, and we have six weeks to build a robot, and so we have a huge scale robot that we’re building right now,” Scott-Ravikumar said. “We’re planning basically to finish that and take it to competition in March or April.”

Since last year, the Ladue robotics team has expanded from a core group of 10 to a group of 15-20. Now, the team wants to further expand their membership through publicizing their club and what they do. The club hopes that the “Drive a Robot” event in the cafeteria introduced students to robotics and generated interest in their club. The team has also sold pizza in AC Lab twice before, and sold soft pretzels in AC Lab Jan. 10, a practice they plan to continue.

“We might be doing this mini-robot competition again,” Scott-Ravikumar said. “We’re definitely still going to keep up the pizza and pretzels in AC Lab. … I don’t know the dates of our tournaments yet, but when we do know them, we can release them and let people know. If you want to stop by and see how the robot’s coming, you can stop by Room 184 at any time, and we’ll be happy to show you around.” #