We are a robotics team, from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA. We all love robotics and engineering we have loads of fun this year building together and helping other kids in the community learn about VEX robotics. Our number 1 goal is to make it to worlds this year. Which we did! Members of the Cool Cats are, 8th grader Rylee Blair, 7th grader Disha Mudenur, and 6th graders Dylan Striek, Chris Burton, Jake Dold, Shrija Kumar, Sam Porter, and Surina Tripathi. The Cool Cats are part of The Vex IQ, Next Level Challenge. To be part of this challenge we must have an autonomous (programming), driving (Remote controller), an engineering notebook, and a STEM project. To succeed all these goals we have to work extremely hard, meaning working outside of the schools’ after school club at each others houses, taking trips to meet and learn about engineering, and raise money for travel expenses. Everyone is always asking us how did we come up with such a great name. We cannot take credit for this. Mr Scott the High School teacher nicknamed us the Cool Cats after the first competition because we wore backwards hats and sunglasses. We decided to make our name even better by adding ears to our hats fully embracing our engineering coolness…

“We love programming. We understand that we have a 99 dollar brain. VEX has had problems with the firmware and distribution. Because it has gotten really popular really fast which I also understand. ‘That’s the life of an engineer my grandpa says. Teams like 1715C who work for hours to write programs like the one below should have every opportunity to prove that their program works during competition.’ ”

— RY-J-B + 1715 Cool Cats