By Emma Kavcioglu

Granada Hills Charter (GHC) is home to a multitude of academic teams that are celebrated for their achievements including Academic Decathlon, Model United Nations, and Speech and Debate. However, our school has a hidden gem of immense talent and ingenuity–Robodox, our robotics team creates clever and whimsical robots. 

Established in 2001, Robodox, designated as Team 599, has consistently earned recognition and accolades. For example, they were honored as the Regional Finalists in San Francisco and as Tournament Finalists at the 2013 FIRST Robotics Los Angeles Regional Competition. More recently, in 2022, The Robodox team was the FRC Los Angeles Regional Champion, and the Robodox team qualified for the World’s Championship the past two years in a row. Just this year, they were regional finalists at the San Diego Regional Competition. 

The Robodox competed in El Segundo last month, where they won a judge’s award.

“We just attended a competition called the SoCal Showdown in El Segundo and we brought our robot Carter the Cardiologist. At that competition, we won a judges award, where the judges interviewed us about our team and honored us with an award,” Events Director and junior Hannah Ju said. 

Comprising 44 students, Robodox engages in the planning, development, and building of robots designed for their competition. The FRC team is further divided into specialized divisions such as CAD, mechanical, ENP, and programming divisions. They all execute separate functions to come together and produce a robot. The school also has a VEX team, which takes part in different competitions. The main difference, for those not in robotics, is that VEX robots are traditionally smaller than FRC robots. 

Robodox stands for Robot Doctors, so the robotics team always ends their robots with a doctoral suffix. Some of their previous robots were named Ozzy “the Ophthalmologist,” Bilbert “the Biologist,” and Phoebe “the Phthisiologist.” 

Carter the Cardiologist, competed at the SoCal Showdown competition by picking up cubes and cones in order to put them on grids as well as balancing. Carter was honored earlier this year as a finalist at the San Diego Regional Competition.

Currently, Robodox is hard at work on creating a new robot, Barry the Bacteriologist. Barry will make its debut at the FRC Tidal Tumble Competition during the weekend of October 21. Within the upcoming months, the Robodox are scheduled to host their VEX Rumble in the Jungle competition at GHC. They will also be competing in The Aerospace Valley Regional Competition and the Los Angeles Regional Competition. 

When the team is not busy making cleverly named robots, they also work on community outreach. In the past Robodox has held workshops for GHC students to teach them more about Robotics. The team also provides Crash Courses over the summer, using Zoom to teach robotics, programming, and CAD, to kids in the Philippines. They also hold panels through their DoxTalks platforms, bringing awareness to the struggles that women face in STEM fields, which are usually predominantly male. 

The Robodox are an unstoppable force, and their journey in the upcoming season promises to be even more exciting. The team exemplifies the spirit of innovation and collaboration, an inspiration for the whole school community.