Brooke Hammarskjold | Staff Reporter

For years, Robotics has Menlo has been in the form of a class taught by Physics and Robotics teacher Marc Allard. The students in Allard’s class built and improved on several different robots which they would then take to and compete at the First Tech Challenge, otherwise known as FTC.
This year, freshman Lauren Yang, after developing an interest in robotics, was disappointed to learn that freshman were not permitted into the Robotics class. So, after meeting with Allard, Yang decided to start a Robotics club of her own open to students of all grades. Additionally, since the class was no longer going to participate in FTC, the club would allow students to continue competing in robotics tournaments. “Having the club as opposed to the class handle the competition is beneficial because students can come back each season with the experience gained from previous years,” Yang said. The club, which consists of only freshmen and sophomores, is split into two teams which compete individually in competitions and is under the supervision of both Allard and junior Spencer Witte.
This year, Robotics club was a major commitment with lots of time spent in the lab. “We were constantly prototyping, redesigning, testing, and rebuilding our robot,” Yang said. The process is not only long, but also very challenging. “Building a robot is definitely a cumulative process because we ran into many unforeseen problems,” Yang added. In the end, however, the teams found their work rewarding, as they created successful robots and gained lots of experience and knowledge about engineering and robotics.
The club recently finished up their season in February and found major success, especially considering how young the team is compared to others. One team, lead by freshman Akshay Srivatsan, made it to the semi-finals after placing third out of 16 teams at the Irvington Regional Qualifier. Meanwhile, the other team, lead by Chang, was one of the 36 teams out of more than 100 to move on from the NorCal State Championship after winning several different awards at various tournaments, including the Control Award, Inspire Award and the PTC design award.
Overall, the club, despite its young members and little experience, found major success. In the next several years, they will be working on expanding