LORENA, Texas — The Lorena Robotics team competed at the state championships and created a robot to complete certain tasks.
"This year, we had a medical themed competition where our robot had to navigate around a simulated body. It had to do things like harvesting veins, removing old and replacing h heart valves, harvesting plaque from veins, all sorts of things," Lorena robotics member Jacob Eaton said.
Not only does the team have to build the robot for physical obstacles, but there's a marketing side to the event as the students have to sell their product.
"It was really nerve wracking at first because we were trying to like be like, how do you market this thing that's so big, but it's supposed to go into the body. And so trying to like explain that to judges, it was like, we have to just paint this picture," robotics member Caitlyn Rowe said.
"There's also the exhibit which not only you make kind of like a trade show kind of booth, but it's you're also trying to get people to come and get interest into your booth and you have to talk to them and kind of give them information quick and efficiently while also still maintaining their attention," fellow robotics member Amara Burghard said.
Lorena won second place at the championships, the highest that they've gotten and it's a big achievement for the program.
'It meant the world to me because I'm a senior, but I started this last year. Especially being like a leader of it too. It's a part of me, a part of my heart that I really felt like it was part of me," Rowe said.
"It was a lot of late nights for a lot of our members. It was just like a lot of, like, hard work and like dedication, like working like 24/7 almost," Burghard said.
The team has made it the state championship four years in a row.
