By Leigh Ann Stone

Review Contributor

Students from all three Lake Orion middle schools gathered on Sept. 7 to kick off the new robotics season, themed Skystone.

This year’s game involves building a robot that can perform tasks during a match total time of two-and-a-half minutes, with the first 30 seconds of time being a completely pre-programmed autonomous period.

FIRST Robotics has teamed up with the Star Wars franchise this year and the theme surrounds building cities of the future.

During the matches, the robots will be competing to build tall “skyscrapers” out of large blocks resembling Legos, and placing a team-designed capstone on top of the skyscraper during the last 30 seconds of the match.

The Oakview CyberDragons FTC #8580, The Scripps Dragons FTC #11691 and The Waldon Dragons FTC #12862 will be registering for qualifying events with the hopes of advancing to the Michigan State Championship in mid-December – and possibly the World Competition, which will be held in Detroit in April 2020.

Students and mentors from the Lake Orion High School Robotics Team 302 mentor each of the middle school teams. The middle school teams, then in turn, mentor the elementary teams.

Not only are they mentoring students on robotics teams, Scripps FTC team paired up with Team 302 to mentor two camps this summer; a FIRST Lego League Camp geared toward students in elementary school, and a Java Camp geared towards middle school students.

These students are not only building robots, they are building the future generation of engineers.

If other middle school students are interested in getting involved, please email lakeorionftc@gmail.com for more information.