httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlgqrKOAUwI

Nevan Wichers, one of this year’s valedictorians, is a student who has dedicated his four years of high school to robotics.

“I joined at the beginning of my freshman year just because before that I was interested in the engineering program and field. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do but I knew it had something to do with robots,” Wichers said.

After joining robotics, Wichers realized that programming is what he was going to do.

Wichers now programs robots to move, shoot hoops, and to follow objects.

“One thing I had fun doing was vision targeting, which is means you get the robot to try to see something with a camera and processing that image to try to find its target,” Wichers said.

Robotics is a club where students meet everyday. In the beginning of the year they stayed until 6:00 p.m. and worked on small robots.

Then as the year progresses, they start to build bigger robots as tall as a standard picnic table and wide as one too. In the middle of the year the robotic students stay at school and work on these robots. The robotics kids usually stay until 8:00 p.m.

“It’s called build season and it’s six weeks in the middle of the school year,” Wichers said.

Wichers really enjoyed being in robotics because he got to know more about robots and programing he got more interested.

“My favorite part is programming part because I like to do that and it’s really cool to get the robot to do what you want. So I have a lot of fun with that and working with other members of the group because it is good to first get a sense of teamwork,” Wichers said.

One person that Wichers has met in robotics and who he really enjoyed working with was technology teacher Dan Lafferty. Lafferty encouraged Wichers to do Robotics.

“Lafferty influenced me to stay in robotics because he was the one who taught me a lot of the things I know about robots and programing,” Wichers said.

He wants everyone to know that robotics is really fun and it will help in the future. “I want everyone to know about robotics because one, it is a lot of fun, second, because it will be really helpful to everyone because robots are everywhere and all around us,” Wichers said. He plans to do programing in the future. “I plan to go to Seattle University after that I want to do something that has to do with programing.”