Republic file photo GalacTech robotics team mentors Rohinish Gupta, left, and Sam Geckler help make an adjustment to a ball collector system on the GalacTech 4926 team robot at the team’s headquarters in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, March 10, 2020.
Local high school students have spent the past two months developing a robot for upcoming competitions and will reveal their creation to the community on Monday.
Team 4926, also known as GalacTech, will host a “Robot Reveal” Open House at 6:30 p.m. Monday at GalacTech Headquarters, 675 Reeves Way. (Enter off Seventh Street, look for double doors with the Team logo in the window).
Columbus Robotics president and Team 4926 founder Sam Geckler said that the team’s last Robot Reveal was held two years ago, in February 2020.
The open house will showcase work done by GalacTech as part of For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics.
“The team, made up of BCSC high school students, wants to share their passion for STEM with the entire community,” organizers said.
GalacTech, which participates in FIRST Robotics Competitions, will reveal the robot they’ve created for the 2022 Rapid React challenge.
The team has spent the last eight weeks designing, prototyping, fabricating and testing the bot, which will soon compete in a FIRST Robotics Competition hosted at Columbus East High School from March 18-20.
The organization FIRST describes FIRST Robotics Competition as “the ultimate sport for the mind” and added that high school students call it “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.”
“Under strict rules, limited time and resources, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team ‘brand,’ hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors,” the organization states on its site. “It’s as close to real-world engineering as a student can get.”
