Three Manheim Township students have joined the Out of the Box Robotics team based in Coatesville. These participants are ninth-grader William Lee and 10th-grader Michael Gallagher, who both attend Manheim Township High School, and eighth-grader Ezekiel Pujol, who attends Manheim Township Middle School.

Each year, teams consisting of students in grades seven to 12 compete head-to-head at area competitions by designing, building and programming a robot to complete a series of assigned tasks.

Most recently, Out of the Box Robotics competed at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) on Dec. 18, 2022, at Coatesville Area Senior High School (CASH). Team members won the Inspire Award, which qualifies them for the state competition in March.

According to http://www.firstinspires.org, the Inspire Awards is given to the team that "best embodies the 'challenge' aspect of the FIRST Team Challenge program." The team that receives the award is ambassador for the FIRST program in its community and is described as a role model FIRST team.

"The Inspire Award is not just about the robot or how it works," Ezekiel explained. "The judges meet with the students, and they have to know about the robot and how it works. It's (also) about how you have done community outreach."

For their community service project, team members participated in All About Robotics Night last August at the Barnstormer's stadium. "It was all about technology," said Ezekiel. "We set up a stand and taught people about robots and FIRST, our robotics league. We even built a robot with a baseball launcher."

Each year, the FTC offers a different task that the student teams must complete with their robots. This year's theme is "Powerplay." The main thing is to pick up cones, which have holes at the top, and put them on pillars or poles," Ezekiel said.

Team members have various duties, including building the robot and programming. "There is designing the robot and how it will be built, putting the robot together and piece work, which is making the pieces of the robot," Ezekiel noted. "There are two drivers; one will operate where the robot goes and the other driver mans the intake and outtake, which is the arm of the robot."

He said that the team members, who meet at CASH, share a special camaraderie. "We (disagree) about how the robot is going to be built, but we do learn a lot, like what to do and not to do. It's a very good system," Ezekiel said.

Michael was the first student from Lancaster County to join the Coatesville team. Ezekiel said that he and William joined later after reading an article about Michael in the Manheim Township Merchandiser.

For more information about Out of the Box Robotics, visit http://www.ftc7244.org.