Blog Post: Arizona Battlebots

Arizona Battlebots (AZ BBIQ) has opened up a window of opportunity for me by giving me the hands-on experience I need to become a future engineer. BattleBots has motivated me to become an engineer because of how much fun it is. 

This whole project required lots of design, time, thinking, effort, and trial and error which are the fundamental skills of being an engineer. I am happy to have had the chance to participate in such an event.

A lot of time and effort went into my bot before it could compete in the Battlebot event. I worked on it not only during school, but before school, and after school as well. It wasn't easy, and there were many times where we started over but that's the fun about engineering. The learning process through trial and error gave me the skills I’ll need in my future career.

One thing that kept me motivated in building my bot throughout this whole experience was my will to never give up. It took Thomas Edison 10,000 tries before he invented the light bulb, so I knew, no matter what, I could not quit. Even when my team had given up, when my bot would not run, I told myself if I had to work on this all day to find what's wrong and fix it to enter the Battlebots event.  I fixed my bot and it competed in the event.

Although my bot didn't win the event...I did what I came to do, which was to compete and have fun with my robot that I made. To know that it came from me and my hard work and finally getting it to work made it all worthwhile.

For any student interested in engineering or designing robots, visit www.azbbiq.org for more information on how you can get involved and have lots of fun!