Toward the end of 8th grade, DJ was recruited to the Harvard-Westlake Middle School robotics team by a new friend. He needed DJ’s skills to maintain the robot the team had designed but which was not doing well in competition. DJ couldn’t help last year, but this year he leads the design/build efforts (with programming, the other major component, led by his friend).
They had a spectacular first qualifier. They won the most points in a single round as well as the most points during the autonomous time. It’s a complicated scoring system due to the fact that each team is randomly partnered with another team who then complete against another pair of teams (i.e., four robots on the field during each round), but in the end the Quantum Potentials came in third, which was good enough to qualify for regionals.
Impressive accomplishment for a first timer!