The Wardlaw+Hartridge School is hosting the RoboCup Junior USA tournament for the second consecutive year on Sunday, May 18. The event will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Plumeri Gym.
The RoboCupJunior USA competition challenges students up to 19 years old to work collaboratively as a team to design, create and code robots to solve problems. The competition is divided into three leagues - Soccer, Rescue and OnStage. The robots are fully autonomous, using sensors to explore the world around them and make decisions without human intervention. The competition is open to students with any level of experience, and teams can use any tool or technology they want – from modifying pre-existing robotics kits to building everything from scratch.
Last year, two W+H teams competed and finished third and fourth, respectively. W+H students, under the guidance of Mr. Tony Diaz, Upper School computer science and math teacher, will be participating in the Soccer event this year. This year’s W+H roster of participants includes Archish Vadlamannati ’25, Victoria Diaz ’27, Noah Ronnen ’26, Ethan Pan ’26, Aron Zhong ’27, Dylon Jiang ’27, Lewis Peng ’27, William Wei ’26 and Shiloh Sharma ’28.
“I am extremely proud of all of the hard work each student has put into this competition,” Mr. Diaz said. “They already have a lot to be proud of, and I can't wait to see their robots in action!”