Bloomfield Hills, Michigan– Roeper robotics team, Blood, Sweat and Gears, ended the Robofest World Championship Game at Lawrence Technological University last weekend in first place over hundreds of teams from across the U. S. and ten other countries. Team members, Sophomore Steven Raphael of Birmingham and Freshman Lilly Richards of Lathrup Village, watched intensely as their robot completed the course with all requisite tasks. (video –https://youtu.be/0GtcA7_O6nc) . Their robot was programmed to be fully autonomous – no remote control. The teams were given new, unknown tasks with just one-half hour of programming and practice before each round.

Lilly and Steven teamed up for a competition while back in Middle School and the team reunited for this event. According to Coach Clint Spevak, the robot was completely designed and built by Steven and Lilly, while he coordinated meeting times and supplied parts and snacks.

Steven and Lilly are more than robotics competitors. This year, Steven came in 5th, out of over 5000 students, in the 61st annual Michigan Math Prize Competition. He was also invited to attend the 2018 Mathematical Olympiad Program (MOP) at Carnegie Mellon this summer. He has a long list of successes in math and linguistics competitions locally and nationally. As far as next year in robotics, Steven wants to make it more challenging by building a robot from scratch based on an Arduino board controller.   Lilly plays violin in the Detroit Metropolitan Youth Symphony, plays varsity girls soccer and has a passion for music and languages. She wants to continue robotics next year, but isn’t sure she wants the challenge of finding all of the pieces and parts that are needed.

For students interested in learning about robotics, Roeper Summer Programs offers a science/robotics camp where campers explore VEX IQ robots, July 9 – 13, 9am to 3pm. Visit Roeper Summer Programs https://www.roeper.org/page/summer for more information or call 248-203-7370.