Shoreline Schools' robotics team to compete in Mount Vernon and Snohomish events

Photo by Jerry Pickard

By Wesley Proudlove

Shoreline's Team Pronto Robotics is getting ready to compete against other teams in the PNW Robotics region. There are over 350 teams in WA, OR and ID alone but worldwide there are 6000 teams and 100,000 competing students.

Team Pronto students are from both Shoreline High Schools and home school students from the area. The 40 person team is given a task by FRC Robotics and the students have a limited budget and limited time to build a robot to complete this task.

Every year the tasks change but the students' enthusiasm never fails.

This year students are to build robots of a specific size and weight to compete. On a field the robots are to deliver large gears to humans in a tower and shoot large plastic balls into a even high tower.

As if this wasn’t enough, at the end of each 4 minute round the robots are to climb a rope to the humans in the tower.

This may sound overwhelming to the normal adult but these robotics kids have grabbed ahold of the task and built not one but two robots to perform these tasks.

Team Pronto will be competing against 35 other teams at Mount Vernon High School in Mount Vernon the weekend of March 18th and 19th and then again the weekend of March 25th and 26th at Glacier Peak in Snohomish.

Competition times are from 8am to about 4pm. The event is free and open to all ages.