The Cobra Commanders, Peoria Unified School District’s FIRST Robotics competition team, have qualified for the World Championships in Houston, this April.
Cobra Commanders is a team of 28 students from various PUSD schools who learn about robotics under the mentorship of engineering industry professionals and Peoria Unified teachers at Cactus High School in Glendale. In their robotics program, the students build 120-pound competitive robots.
The team began working on this year’s robot in January when FIRST announced this season’s game, REEFSCAPE. In the past two months, students and mentors have invested thousands of hours in designing, building, and programming the robot using industry-standard software and manufacturing tools. Students honed their presentation, public speaking and marketing skills to compete for various judged awards.
Season awards earned by The Cobra Commanders thus far are:
• Hueneme Port Regional – Engineering Inspiration Award
• Hueneme Port Regional – Woodie Flowers Finalist Award – Luke Balancio
• Utah Regional – Regional finalist
• Utah Regional – Excellence in Engineering award
• Arizona East Regional – Regional finalist
• Arizona East Regional – Sustainability Award
• Arizona East Regional – Volunteer of the Year Award – Jared Larson
• AZFirst – Teacher of the Year - Will Hammel
With these accolades, The Cobra Commanders have now qualified for the FIRST World Championship in Houston where the team will compete with hundreds of teams from around the world for the titles.
