64. Robotics

Over the past decade, the robotics program has grown from a small after school club to a fully developed program of High School classes, Middle School and First Program electives and after school classes. Pictured: Chuppie, the robot that Uncertainty Principle brought to the First Tech Challenge World Championships in 2017.

Over the past ten years, Dalton robotics has grown from a single LEGO robotics club with 30 students to a full progression of five high school classes, half a dozen middle school after-school offerings, and elective programs in First Program. No one expected how popular it would become nor how passionately the students would dive into the material. It’s become commonplace for students to volunteer to come in over weekends and holidays to work on their designs. That hard work has paid off — Dalton has established itself as one of the top schools for robotics and has advanced to the Robotics World Championship in multiple different competitions, including FIRST Lego League, FIRST Tech Challenge, and RoboCup Junior. Also, the students have actively engaged with their local engineering community and helped promote robotics education by hosting tournaments, mentoring teams, and running workshops.

To celebrate our 100th, we’ve submitted one of the robots from the 2017-18 season. Lauren Franco ’20 explains:

“This is Chuppie, the robot that Uncertainty Principle brought to the First Tech Challenge World Championships in 2017. Chuppie was a great robot because he could do every obstacle in the game in a very simple way. One of the coolest features on Chuppie is the fork used for capping the ball. We tried very hard to make the design as simple as possible as well as to focus on its aesthetics. We used powder coating for the purple metal pieces which made it look sleek!”
— Sloan Warren, PhD, K-12 Engineering Department Chair