This story originally appeared on RealTime/STL.
Cafe Bot coach Kimberly Sanders, Peter Kersulis, Brandon Sanders and Ethan Michalichek received the third place Inspire award Saturday afternoon at the FIRST Tech Challenge closing ceremony at America’s Center. Photo provided by Cafe Bot.
A lot goes into building a robot. A lot more goes in to building an elite robotics team. Just ask Cafe Bot, the FIRST Tech Challenge team from Webster Groves.
The 3-year-old three-man team received third place in the FIRST Championship Inspire award Saturday afternoon at FIRST world championship at the Edward Jones Dome.
“This is the top award we could receive in our program,” said team member Brandon Sanders. “We’re very excited.”
The team was judged on “gracious professionalism,” a catchphrase among FIRST participants, as well as robotics performance, teamwork and communication, an engineering notebook, and interviews.
Team member Ethan Michalichek described the notebook as “a literary robot.”
“It’s very difficult,” Sanders said of the work that goes into it. “It’s almost like a whole robot in itself.”
The outreach portions of the program came a bit easier for the trio.
“We enjoy getting out and meeting new teams, and meeting with our sponsor and things like it,” Michalichek said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
As part of their outreach campaign, the team created an international exchange program.
“We connect local teams with international teams, and have them host the international teams to help them while they’re in the United States for the world championship,” said Michalichek.
In its pilot year, teams from 15 countries participated in the program.
“We aspire to inspire,” said Peter Kersulis, as his teammates groaned and rolled their eyes at his word play. “We like to build up our team as much as we can. Most of our outreach events are mainly helping other teams, presenting, showing people what FIRST is and getting people involved.”
That includes recruiting new members.
“We’re very intent on growing,” Sanders said. “It’s not about just competing and being a successful team, it’s also about pulling in other people to enjoy it with you, be successful with you.”
The team will be showing off their robot and recruiting May 3 and 4 at the Spirit of St. Louis Air Show.
Cafe Bot was a finalist for other awards Saturday, as well.
The John Burroughs School Bombers from St. Louis were named one of the top teams on the playing field at Saturday’s ceremony.
