Coronado High School’s FIRST Robotics Team, named Crown City Robotics, was created in 2008 by a group of motivated CHS students who wanted to put their knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and math to use in the real world. The team now has more than 40 members and has successfully built three fully-functional robots. The team’s leaders consist of co-presidents, David Cuban and Thomas Luppi; secretary, Kyana Van Houten; treasurer, Morgan Montgomery; and safety captain, Gustavo Montalvo. The team’s teacher advisor is Mr. Bucko who also teaches Physics and an Astronomy enrichment class at CHS.
Crown City Robotics is one of the many robotics teams that are a part of FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) which is an internationally renown organization founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and advocate for science and technology. FIRST gives high school students from all over the world the opportunity to work with professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as others such as public relations, advertisement, and business. FIRST not only inspires students to follow careers in the fields of STEM but allows students to apply knowledge gained in school to solve problems in the real world and learn new skills in computer programming, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, pneumatics, communication, and leadership.
Each year FIRST creates a game-like scenario, and the FIRST teams are given 6 weeks to build a robot that will best achieve the game’s goals. There are over 60 regional competitions that take place all over the world from San Diego, California to Tel Aviv, Israel. Thousands of robotics teams compete at these regional competitions in the hope that they may move on to compete in the FIRST Championship.
CCR is a new team with only 3 years under its belt but already the team has performed admirably at the San Diego Regional Competition in 2009, 2010, and 2011 and has improved exponentially each year. This year the team hopes to compete in the San Diego Regional Competition and one other regional competition in order to have better chances of making it to the Championships.
