NAHS robotics program wins big

Submitted photo SRNS engineer Annamarie MacMurray, left, provides guidance to North Augusta High School Robotics Team members Jonathan Grimm, second from left, and Ajay Heera.  The team went on to take first place in the recent 2015 South Carolina State Competition during the first year of the new program.

A total of 35 students comprised three teams in the first year of North Augusta High School’s robotics program, with one team taking the gold on the state level and moving on to the super-regional competition in San Antonio, Texas.

The three teams, Won and Done, Chabotic and Full Metal Jackets, represented the school as they competed against 18 other high schools in the South Carolina State Robotics Championship.

The team captains for Won and Done chose four team members to go with them to Texas based on their abilities to help them win at the next level. Those going include senior captain Jonathan Grimm, team captain AJ Heera, Justin Dobey, Oji Oji, Dawson Hutton and Seth Kantz.

The senior team of Won and Done, consisting of Justin Dobey, Micah Farrar, Alex Gambill, Jonathan Grimm, Ajay Heera and Oji Oji, took down the competition to advance to the super-regional competition, which will be March 11 through 13.

“Strategy was critical to our success at state,” Grimm, the team captain, said. “We realized the importance of scouting other robots before we started playing each match. Our team would work with the other alliance partners to create the best team we could.”

Grimm added that it was also important for the robot to be able to withstand possible collisions that it may undergo with other robots during competition.

Employees from the Traveling Science and Math Demonstrations Program at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions – the management and operations contractor for SRS – stepped forward to assist teachers with forming the school’s robotics organization.

Annamarie MacMurray, SRNS mechanical engineer and the high school’s robotics mentor, said officials were pleasantly shocked by the success of the team.

“We looked forward to this competition as a wonderful opportunity to pick up some experience. I’m still amazed and so proud of all our teams,” MacMurray said.

Jane Monroe, the team’s manager, added, “We had students interested in business careers; raising money, tracking inventory, placing purchase orders, marketing, tracking productive hours, etc. We hired engineers to train our workforce and manage build sessions three days a week. We built robots to compete at our end customer’s competition and won big time.”


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