Steel Hornets Robotics Team Ranked 12th in World

Special to Emmaus Patch By Chrissy Cilento, Emmaus High School Junior

A mere six-years old, the Steel Hornet's Robotics Team at Emmaus High School has some pretty impressive street cred these days.

The team placed 12th of 2,085 teams participating in the FIRST world championship robotics competition held last month in St. Louis in the Edward Jones Dome (home field of the NFL Rams). FIRST, which is an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international robotics league consisting of more than 2,000 teams. With its 12th-place showing in St. Louis, the EHS team is now ranked in the top .6 percent in the world.

Here’s how the annual international robotics competition works: in about the second week of school, every team in the world is issued a manual describing the year’s assignment. For the 2011-2012 school year, the challenge was to build a game. Each of the 2,085 teams were given the exact same manual with the exact same “goal” game -- "Bowled Over!" -- but each team got to choose how it would make that game come alive from the piece of paper on which it was described. Choosing materials from the list of products allowed, the teams then used their engineering and creative skills to personalize, customize, and program their machines.

Once all the games were created, the teams then participated in small qualifying tournaments, which led to state championships. From there, whichever teams qualified advanced to the world championship level.

The 22 Steel Hornets members worked tirelessly this entire year to design its version of “Bowled Over!” The team dedicated countless hours toward making its robot the best it could be, and in the end the Steel Hornets definitely triumphed!

Next on the agenda for the Steel Hornets is fundraising and other preparations for the 2012-2013 season, in which the team will hopefully be just as successful as it was this year. 

Students involved in the success of “Bowled Over!” 

• Allen Poon 
• Andy Lang
• Austin Stahley
• Ben Overholts
• Chris Hersh 
• Derek Weber
• Fergus Watkins
• Jake McNamara
• James Then
• Jeremy Lim
• John Janney
• Kevin Rodgers
• Lauren Gutterman
• Mason Levis
• Matt Gutterman
• Robert Wang
• Sam Green
• Scott Amankwatia
• Shaun Baillie
• Shelby Werley
• Sung Yeul Kim
• Tommy Boty

Chrissy Cilento, a junior at , plans to study journalism in college. She is a periodic contributor to Patch.