People of Tomorrow Applying Their Outstanding Engineering Skills: El Segundo High School
The ESHS Robotics Club is made up of a conglomerate of teams competing in various robotics and computer science competitions which all share the same mission. To teach and expose kids about the fundamentals of Science and Engineering.
Collectively we are known as The P.O.T.A.T.O.E.S. or People Of Tomorrow Applying Their Outstanding Engineering Skills.
Combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology. We call FIRST Robotics Competition the ultimate Sport for the Mind. High-school student participants call it “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.”
Under strict rules, limited resources, and an intense six-week time limit, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors. It’s as close to real-world engineering as a student can get. Volunteer professional mentors lend their time and talents to guide each team. Each season ends with an exciting FIRST Championship.
Teams of students work together to design, program, and build a robot that competes with other robots from other teams. Each robot is designed to complete a certain objective or goal, which changes annually. Students learn to build robots using VEX parts, program a robot using RobotC, and design their VEX Robot using Autodesk Inventor. Two alliances, each with two robots, battle on the field, collecting as many points possible within the time restriction.
The competition puts teams of… students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. In the rounds of competition, teams are given a set of virtual images that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services.