A group of local high school students is getting ready for one of the world's biggest science competitions.
The Chatham-Kent Cyber Pack is a team of 25 high schoolers who take part in the First Robotics Competition every year. The competition challenges teams from across the globe to build a robot from scratch.
The team's robot, which has yet to be named, was given a final look over on Tuesday before it was packed up for the first round of the competition in March.
Each year the competition has a theme to follow and specific tasks the robot must be able to do. This year's theme is space and the robot must be able to pick up items.
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The team's mentor, John Ripley, said that the competition is about a lot more than just the building mechanics.
"The team is about 20 per cent building a robot," he explained. "Most of the awards are not for building the robot itself. It's for how your team interacts with the judges, your safety program, your team spirit, your innovations, your different ideas you bring to the tables and how well you work for others."
The students get six weeks to build their bot. It is controlled by computer coding programmed by the students.
Megan Gooch, a Grade 12 student at Ursuline College Chatham, helped build last year's robot and is this year's lead programmer for the team.
"The competitions are a really great opportunity to meet other people in robotics as well outside of our team and just see everyone working together to accomplish something really cool," said Gooch. "The energy there is amazing."
The team will first complete in Windsor's competition at the end of March and then in London's competition in early April. If they are able to nab a space in the top three, they will then move on to the provincial championships in Toronto.
