The Weekly Newspaper of Inglewood
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 68, No. 48 - November 28, 2019
Family Night at Hudnall School
Inglewood Unified School District was thankful for parent engagement and collaboration celebrated during Hudnall Elementary School’s Family Night last week. Photo: IUSD
Robotics from front page
League. These competitions combine the
excitement of sport and the knowhow of
engineering. A winning formula is having
team members with the right skills sets.
The El Segundo High School club says on
its website that robotics meets are “as close
to real-world engineering as a student can
get.” Local teams face the same constraints
as South Bay aerospace and flight engineers:
limited resources and time to design and create
a machine that is dependable and durable.
Alas, fundraising to attend meets here and
internationally is a task that can’t be assigned
to the robots. South Los Angeles Robotics
needs to raise $15,000 to send two teams to
the world championships on Dec. 14 and 15
in Shanghai, China. The kids have set up a
GoFundMe campaign to raise the money for
their travel, lodging and entry fees.
SOLA Robotics reached a milestone in
Rizhou at the two-day competition in late
October, winning a first prize and being
voted the most popular presenters among all
of the competitors from Asia, North America
and Europe. The Inglewood team delivered a
presentation about artificial intelligence that
had all eyes of them, according to Lashley.
Many of the Chinese people who attended
had never met anyone from outside China
before, which added to the Southern California
team’s “ rock star” status at the teen
tech event. “Our kids loved it, and they got
to bond with kids from the U.K and the
Philippine teams,” Lashley said.
The SOLA club members left China having
made many new friends living around the
world, and they continue to stay in touch
with their likeminded bot buddies over social
media and phone apps. To advance to the
world championships, the area teens and
their droid took on all-comers at the U.S.
competition held in August in Orange County.
South LA Robotics, which had just opened
its club doors the month before, stole the show
despite Beatty, Elias and Arias’ short time
together. The club took first and second prizes
in the high school division, and with it they
qualified for the trip of a lifetime to Rizhou.
For the world championships, SOLA is
adding a fourth member -- a girl - who is a
superstar programmer. The club will enter two
teams to put their bots up against the best.
Lashley doesn’t think her teams will be
nervous in Shanghai next month. “The kids
were pretty relaxed” at the last competition,
and “they were excited to work with kids from
other countries, all of whom spoke English.”
Her team, she says, work really well together.
“They have to be pretty good to do this.”
Contributions to help SOLA get to Shanghai
can be made at the club’s GoFundMe page.
Type in South LA Kids Go to Robotics World
Championships, or contact Lashley at the
club at 424-352-1931 with a text or phone
call. As of Saturday, the club was $14,000
short of its fundraising goal for the world
competition in mid-December.
The other robotics clubs and teams from
South Bay high schools also gladly accept
donations of money, parts and equipment.
To find a local team to support, go to firsttechsocal.
org/ or visit the school websites for
the El Segundo, Inglewood and Hawthorne
high schools. •
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