1 week Ago By By JULIE DRAKE Valley Press Staff Writer
PALMDALE — The Palmdale Aerospace Academy sixth-graders Valentina Puente, Paola Soto and Steve Quiroz; seventh-grader Joseph Arana; and ninth-grader Chloe Osby are among the inaugural members of the school’s FIRST Tech Challenge robotics teams. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an international organization that promotes science education, has two classes of robotics competitions. The FTC program is for middle school students; the FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) is for high school students.
The Aerospace Academy already has an award-winning FRC program. The Gryffingear team won the world championship in 2015 in its first season. Now the academy’s middle school hopes to add to that winning legacy.
The school has three FTC teams — The Martians, Zeus Strikers and Iron Legion. The FTC and FRC robotics competitions run on different schedules. The FTC held its kickoff in September.
The 2024-24 ocean-inspired season event is called Into the Deep. Teams are now in the qualifying season and state and regional championship. The FTC World Championship is in April.
“We basically work on robotics, engineering, work as a team in the community to try and build a robot, go to competition, program and stuff like that,” Chloe said. “We learn a lot of leadership skills, how to work with a team and a lot of other really great things.” Chloe is the team lead for team 9777, the Iron Legion.
The high school students serve as mentors to the younger robotics students. The Aerospace Academy hosted a robotics tournament last month attended by about 12 teams, including one from Ridgecrest. The other teams were from Palmdale and Lancaster.
“I didn’t want to touch a robot when I was in sixth (grade), but this year, when I started going in it, I learned a lot,” said Joseph, who is on team 9098, the Zeus Strikers. He works on building the robot. Paolo was inspired to join a team after watching her eighth-grade brother do robotics.
“I thought it would be fun and it is fun,” she said. “He says that we have to do a lot of programming when we get to the eighth grade.” She added: “Also, about my family, my nino is an engineer.
He creates like airplanes and stuff. Also, my cousin and my brother want to do engineering.” Sixth-grader Steve joined robotics to learn how to build a robot.
He is interested in engineering. “It’s good; we’re learning a lot,” he said about the math involved in the team sport. They will host their next meet in January.
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