MSET expands with new competitions

December 16, 2012 — by David Sparkman and Stanley Yip

For the first time, the Mechanical Science and Engineering Team (MSET), or informally known as the robotics team, has implemented a waiting list for membership.

For the first time, the Mechanical Science and Engineering Team (MSET), or informally known as the robotics team, has implemented a waiting list for membership. The first 80 students who signed up were admitted before the number was capped and any remaining interested students had to be placed on the waiting list.

“[The membership increase] is really encouraging because it showed us how many people we have at the school who are interested in robotics,” vice president junior Ivan France said.

To accommodate the large membership, the club is participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) with newly formed team 6155, “The Cuttlefish,” for the first time. The challenge entails hanging plastic rings on a rack in a tic-tac-toe fashion and lifting other teams’ robots for bonus points. After attending their first ever competition on Nov. 10, the team members were able to advance to the final matches and finish in second place.

“It felt really good to [place second]. We were really happy with the result,” freshman Navid Mokhlesi said. “We weren’t expecting it at all.”

The team is also participating in the Tech Museum’s Tech Challenge (TTC) in which participants must build a small machine that is able to drop “probes” on a “far away asteroid.” The first competition date has not yet been finalized.

MSET also made an appearance at the Los Gatos vs. Saratoga football game with their robot named “Pride-Bot.” In collaboration with the Saratoga Sports Boosters, MSET built the robot to launch about 150 rally towels into the stands using a slingshot attached to the frame.

“We had a great opportunity to show the school community how great robotics is, and it worked really well,” France said. “It was a lot of fun, and the crowd was really excited about it.”

MSET hopes to feature “Pride-Bot” at future sporting events like basketball games or at rallies.

Despite the flurry of new competitions and events, MSET has still been gearing up for its biggest competition, the FIRST Robotics Competition, which is set to begin on Jan. 5.

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