Marlborough – On Jan. 21, Team 4344B, The Autonomous Panthers from 1Lt. Charles W. Whitcomb Middle School, won the Excellence Award in the VEX Robotics Competition, the highest award presented in this competition. The judges of the competition consider each team’s engineering notebook, field performance, and team dynamics in determining the Excellence Award winner.
The Autonomous Panthers consists of Zeena Acharya, writer of the engineering notebook, Jeffrey Cote, Ryan Fettig, programmer for the Autonomous Mode, and Colin Jackson, the programmer for the driver control. All four of the team members design/build as well as drive the robot. These four students have been teammates since the sixth grade.
One of the primary missions of the VEX Robotics Competition is to help students acquire real world life skills that will benefit them in their academic and professional future. The engineering notebook is a way for teams to document how the VEX Robotics Competition experience has helped them to better understand the engineering design process while also practicing a variety of critical life skills including project management, time management, brainstorming, and teamwork.
