At Liberty High School, located in the city of Manhattan, there is a group of students who are part of an extracurricular class, a team of robotics called Liberty Robotics. The team participated in the FIRST Tech Challenge 2022 – 23 Season (Center Stage).  Students in grades 7-12 design, build, program and operate robots to compete in head-to-head challenges, working in two levels and  teams.  The competitions were held in different schools that were selected by the New York FTC. Each team had two opportunities to qualify.

The teams are composed of an engineer, who helps build the robot and uses  the different parts that are used during the assembly of the robot.

The programmer is in charge of the software area. To achieve the correct functioning of the robots, the programmer must use a specific language to program the robots and develop a specific software.

The Social Media team is in charge of managing the social networks of the group who are interested and share similar ideas about robots.

Despite being young with little to no experience in building robots, the team had to learn to implement their knowledge from scratch, which took many hours.

Being part of a team should be about more than just enjoying participating in competitions, as one team member, Labeeba, says: “I like to meet new people, whether that is meeting fellow robotics members or a mentor and experts in the field of robotics. There is always so much to learn from other people! You get to make new memories, create crucial networks and as always, I am able to see more of the world through other people and their guidance.”

In order for the team to meet its objectives and complete the work, one member of the team, Salcet, stated that, “In a team there must be collaboration, where everyone contributes. Also, everyone has to trust each other, and, ultimately, be loyal to one another.”