The D.C. Regional robotics competition took place last weekend at the D.C. Convention Center, where Langley placed twenty-third out of 63 teams with six wins and four losses.

The students spent about six weeks constructing the main robot; however, this year they were pressured with the extra task of building a “mini-bot” as well, which added roughly two to three more weeks to the schedule.

“The idea of the game this year was to place tubes of different shapes on racks that were raised at different levels. The higher placed the tube, the more points,” said junior Neil Patil.

Langley’s main robot was not only designed to traverse the field and collect tubes, but also to then subsequently hang the tubes at any of the three given racks situated at different heights. However, after a collision with another truck, the team was left with a debilitated robot that could no longer carry the tubes.

“With no way of scoring points, we had to immediately change our approach, and so we switched towards a defensive stance where we successfully blocked our opponent’s robots from being able to hang tubes on their racks,” said Patil.

While the team did not advance any farther at the DC competition, they will have another shot at winning an award when they compete at the Virginia Regional competition at the Virginia Commonwealth University on Apr. 7-9.

“We’re not too worried about not advancing in D.C., since D.C. is usually our “lab rat” where we see our flaws and strengths,” said Patil. “VCU is where we will excel.”