Baldwin places eighth at the robotics club competition

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Jelena Winowich, Staff Writer

The robotics club competed at California University this past weekend, with one of the team’s robots taking ninth place out of about 80 competitors.

The Baldwin team had won a competition in March, clinching a spot in last weekend’s event.

Baldwin entered two robots in the competition: El Sol, which is three years old and has no weapons, and the Urbanator, which is only a year old but is designed to have weapons. Students worked on both robots for a long time to prepare for the battles.

Although the Urbanator was not able to place very high, robotics teacher Chris Ross pointed out that there was a team that built a robot specifically to beat El Sol.

“They specifically made a modification to beat our robot,” Ross said.

Another team duplicated their design.

“It was neat to see that someone thought our design was cool enough to take it and make it better,” Ross said.

The team’s El Sol robot did well, placing ninth out of 80..

After three years, Ross is expecting El Sol, which is designed to look like the sun, to be retired. Students likely will come up with a new design in the future, he said.