Before School Lets Out, a Basketball-Playing Robot Takes the Court

By VIVIAN YEE

The first day of school was coming to an end at Staten Island Technical High School, but the members of the school's robotics team, Team 375: The Robotic Plague, still had one hurdle to clear. They couldn't wait to demonstrate their champion basketball-launching robot to Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott and other dignitaries who had dropped by.

The robot, which resembled a larger version of a tennis ball machine with pneumatic pumps on either side, could wheel around, pause and deliver a perfect 3-pointer that dropped cleanly through a net in the school's gym. Members of the robotics team hovered eagerly around it, as their creation - which they named тринадцать, the Russian word for 13 - dazzled the crowd. (Mr. Walcott, who admitted to lacking athletic skill, missed two consecutive shots.)

And this was just last year's robot.

Last year, тринадцать helped Team 3 75 win the regional FIRST Robotics competition, an international competition for high school robotics, but the team is already looking ahead to this year's competition. They spend six weeks on each FIRST robot, with the rest of the year going to other projects, like an electric wheelchair that can move in any direction.

“The last few years we've gone to nationals,” Muhammadi Azeem, 15, a sophomore, said proudly. He is one of the youngest members of the team.

Stephen McFeeley, 16, a senior, said he had spent much of his winter constructing the basketball robot, making it his favorite project. “I personally worked on it a lot, so there's some favoritism,” he said.

As the crowds dispersed and students flocked away from school, some catching rides home on each other's backs, Muhammadi, Stephen and other team members began hauling the robot away. A reporter asked if they were good at basketball - the sport, not the robot.

Tyler Kruppa, 16, a junio r, rolled his eyes. “We're on the robotics team, come on!” he said.

But given a choice between basketball and basketball robots, he said, the answer was obvious.

“Robotics, definitely.”