LAHS Robotics Club members Clark Noenincks, left, and Minhtet Htoon speak July 5 at Kiwanis Club. Courtesy/Kiwanis

LAHS Robotics Club Member Andy Erickson speaks July 5 at the Kiwanis Club meeting. Courtesy/Kiwanis

By BROOKE DAVIS
KIWANIS Club of Los Alamos

Four members of the Los Alamos High School Robotics Club – Andy Erickson, Clark Noenincks, Minhtet Htoon and Jim TenCate – spoke July 5 to the Kiwanis Club. They described an intense program of learning and hands-on work that led to state and national success this year.

Erickson said that this was the second year in a row that the Los Alamos club had qualified for participation in the World Robotics Championship in Houston. The Hilltoppers were among more than 300 teams entered in this STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) competition. They finished in fourth place. The victory was especially sweet because a major goal of the club is to increase STEM interest and activity in Northern New Mexico schools.

For this year’s competition, the cub had to design and build a robot that could both shoot basketball hoops and climbing up a series of bars of increasing height. Once the competition parameters were announced, competing clubs were given a very short period of time, about 6 to 8 weeks, to build their entries.

Noenincks stated that the competition teaches professionalism and enthusiasm at the highest level.

“We don’t use students to build robots,” Noenincks said. “We use robots to build students.”

Htoon added, “We want students, clubs and the state team to work together,” adding that one of the challenges the Los Alamos club faces is finding the funding needed to cover all their expenses.

TenCate said that the club plans to enter a couple of their robots in the 2022 Los Alamos County Science Fair.

The Los Alamos Robotics Club is a hard-working and dedicated group of students working both locally and regionally to increase interest in STEM and robotics. They want to significantly increase the number of teams in New Mexico.