TAUNTON- Superintendent John Cabral is pleased to share that Taunton High School’s robotics team reached an important milestone by competing in the team’s first-ever FIRST FTC tournament in Canton last month.
The 10-member team, comprised of sophomores, juniors and seniors, started preparing for the competition in October under the supervision of industrial technology teacher Christopher Langille.
Competing at the tournament in Canton is the culmination of months of work. “I’d say my favorite part about this event is just getting here,” Greg Westberg ‘26, said. “It’s what’s really great about this experience of helping with this robot, getting to compete and put yourself out there, showing who we are and what we’ve done as a team.”
The students designed, built and programmed the robot dubbed “Roar.” Students chose the
name Roar because of the sign-off of the Taunton High School daily announcements: “Go Tigers, ROAR.”
Roar was tasked with delivering plastic pixels to specific spots on the field, as well as putting them on the backdrop and stacking them. Roar also had to drive autonomously and drop pixels at specific points on the field. It had to recognize where a team prop was placed and replace it with a pixel. It would then drive to the backdrop and use its claw to drop a pixel.
“I like looking at all the different designs; none of the robots are the same,” Keidyn DeCosta ‘24 said. “It’s really cool to see the different perspectives people have when they build their own robots.”
The club is scheduled to meet after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays but would frequently meet every day to make up for time lost in September.“We got a bit of a late start compared to other teams,” Langille said. “The kids worked really hard to make sure we were ready to compete.”
Langille also put in the hours to get Roar ready for competition, spending time on weekends and at night to learn the new coding software.
“It was such a new and advanced coding software, it was unfair of me to just throw it on the kids without knowing how to do it myself so I could answer their questions,” Langille said. “So, I taught it to myself, as best I could, over those 3 months. I figure I have at least 300 hours of learning this software.”
Langille’s dedication did not go unnoticed by his team. “He’s been a really good manager to us,” Ryan Goncalves ‘25 said. “He has guided us through this process. He’s gotten the fine details that have made this robot really great and it’s amazing. This is such a big journey and we’re so thankful to have him here.”
The team is now preparing for the Massachusetts SkillsUSA competition. New team members are always welcome.
“We’ll always take students who are interested,” Langille said. You wouldn’t be able to compete in an event this year, but come take a look, build a robot, meet new people, and get involved. If it's something you like, take Robotics I next year and you’ll get to work on robots daily."