Team Pronto members get ready for another season of competition

2012 Team with Hank in competition
Photo by Veronica Cook

By Wesley Proudlove

Another Team Pronto build season has almost come to an end.  The members of Team Pronto have been working hard the past six weeks to build a robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics competitions. 

Each year 100,000 students from all over the world are given a challenge to design, build and program a robot all these tasks must be completed in only 6 weeks.

The robot showed up at a 2013
Shorewood open house
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

2015's robotics event involves the robots working with other robotics teams to build and stack totes that weigh 7.8 pounds with a capacity of 2.3 cubic feet each. The higher the stacks of totes the more points an alliance can score. By stacking the totes teams will be simulating what goes on in a recycling yard with the separation of recycled materials.  Hence the name of this years event is Recycle Rush.

Once the totes are stacked a 60 gallon garbage can will be added to the top of the stack for extra points. The stacks will only count for scoring if its happens on a section of the playing field that is slightly raised from the rest of the field.  This raised scoring section is covered in a very slippery material. This will be a challenge but not a challenge that Team Pronto will shy away from.

Chuck was the 2014 model

Just like last year Shorewood High School and the Shoreline School District will host an event right here at Shorewood March 21st and 22nd. Shorewood is only 1 of 10 events in WA, OR and ID to host an event and this gives Team Pronto a huge advantage competing in front of a home crowd. 30 teams from all over the region will compete for a chance to make enough points to make it to regionals at EWU. The top 16 teams at the EWU event will get an invite to the world championships in St Louis first week of April.      

A little history of Team Pronto

Team Pronto was founded at Shorewood High School seven years ago when four students talked an over-worked, over-tired Automotive Teacher into taking on the world of robotics with them. These original team members promised it would be just a few weeks a year.

What started with those four energetic students quickly grew to 12 students that first year. The tired automotive instructor got engineering mentor help for the students from UW Robotics Lab and Boeing Company. That first year's robot did indeed compete and compete well, ending the Seattle competition ranked 1st out of 64 teams. In the finals Team Pronto just missed a trip to the world championships.

2014 Team Pronto

Flash forward to 2015. Team Pronto has grown to not just involve Shorewood students but also Shorecrest students, home school students and any brave soul that would like to have fun. The ranks have swollen to 68 student team members and 9 mentors. The mentors come from companies and schools such as Boeing, Micorsoft, UW, SCC and Amazon along with one still very tired, over- worked automotive teacher.

Team Pronto Robotics is now a year-round club with many outreach events hosted and attended by Team Pronto members. Just a sampling of the past years events reveals that Team Pronto has brought its past robots to events at elementary schools, middle schools and Shoreline Community College. The robots have performed at outdoor movies for this past summer and brought attention to STEM events thoughout the district.

2013 competition involved a teeter board

Team Pronto members are busy building at the Shorewood Auto Shop/ Robotics Lab.  The last few hours before  packing up the robot is always filled with pressure, laughs and lots of snacks. The new yet unnamed robot must be packed up Tuesday by 9pm to await the first competition of the year at Mount Vernon High School March 14th and 15th.   

I look back at past students who have proudly worn the name Team Pronto on their shirts and I am filled with huge pride. Past members of Team Pronto have gone on to great success in engineering, bio-mechanical robotics, underwater robotics, windmill building, Tesla electric cars, computer sciences, hybrid automotive technicians, and so many more past members await their college graduations so they can also enter the world with all the skills they have gained at Team Pronto Robotics.