Robotics Club at West Anchorage High School helps members understand the process of programing and designing robots. Robotics Club can join competitions to compete against other schools to see which robot is the best at different tasks. Robotics runs from 2:15 to 4:00 after school in room 54 every Tuesday.

Robotics Club is lead by Liliya Huseynova, a math teacher at West for 15 years. Tex White is the president and helps out with designing the robots and programming the robot when the other programmer is not available to show up that day. Ben Tait is the vice president and mainly does the programming for the robots, but will also help building the robots when they have the blueprints done. “Robotics is more of a student lead club, but is still supervised by me,” said Huseynova.

In robotics there are three different jobs: programmers; builders; and designers. The programmers will program what the robot does and how it moves. The designers makes what the robot will look like or at least what they want it to look like. The builders then build the robot and figure out how everything is going to fit on the robot.  

The students in Robotics Club have five different phases to build the robot. The first stage is to figure out what the robot is going to do. After that’s done, they will figure out the layout of the robot. The next stage is to make the blueprint of the robot. Once they have the blueprint they can start to build the bot, and while the bot is getting built they will figure out what the bot is going to do. After the programming is done, they test the bot to see if it works how they want it to.

Robotics encourages people to try different skills and techniques to figure out how to build the robot and how to work together. Some of the other robotics members said they joined because they wanted to learn more about what robotics really was and how it could help people learn different skills. White said, “People should join robotics if they want to learn about the different parts of robotics.”

To join robotics you just need to show up for a meeting and help build the robots with the other members of the club and to show up regularly to the meetings. White said, “Robotics can benefit you by learn how to work with other people and making new friends.”

Tait said, “Some job skills you can get from robotics are programming, engineering and communication skills.”

West isn’t competing in any tournaments or competitions this year because they have been very stressful for the members of robotics and Huseynova. Also robotics isn’t competing this year because they have been working on the robots for the assembly’s at West. When they competed in the tournaments they would meet two times a week and even on the weekends, so they could finish working on the robot.