Go to school, study for finals, build robots. It’s all in a day’s work for Tigerbytes Robotics, a team of mechanically inclined high school students from all over Baton Rouge, recruited and led by mentors like LSU sophomore Alex Daniel. Once a member of the team himself, Daniel says his goal is to give these teens as much control over the building process as possible.
Each January, Tigerbytes receives a box of robot components and a game their completed robot will face from FIRST, an international robotics competition. From there, the students each present their own ideas for the robot and spend the next six weeks working together to construct the best design. As soon as the last bell rings, students fill the garage workshop for six hours a day in hopes of winning regionals in March and moving forward in the competition. “We do have to remind them,” Daniel says, “that school comes before robots.”
Keep up with the team and their creations at team4209.org.
