The robotics team here at Lamar, better known as Discobots, is a multi-school robotics organization that takes place at schools like Debakey, Carnegie, Lanier and even in other states like California. However, Discobots is more than just a robotics class. Discobots helps schools start and manage their own robotics team while collaborating with them on various projects. Discobots helped Debakey and Carnegie start their robotics team since they were unable to due to a lack of funding and teachers. They even helped a high school in Canada hop on the robotics train and they are flourishing like never before. 

“Before I was a student here, we had founded a team in Canada,” senior and Discobots Team Captain Soumil Goyal said. “They started low but slowly we built them up and now they compete very fiercely at the international level.” 

One may wonder how a Robotics team in Texas collaborates with a high school in Canada. About once or twice a month, Discobots meets with them over Microsoft Teams and discusses robotics plans and they share information to guide each other as they compete in different countries. 

“We talk with them about robotics plans, we share our progress, we share our tips and tricks because until the world championships we basically compete in separate countries,” Goyal said. “We model this industrial practice [team engineering] by making sure we reach out and collaborate, and we are all better in that way.” 

Discobots host robotics meetings here at Lamar as a mentor to not only these schools but middle school students as well. A recommendation to the younger students interested in robotics is the Discobots workshops. The workshops are to get more people interested in robotics in hopes of growing Discobots. 

“At the end of the school year, we usually go to four to five middle schools and show them what we do,” junior and Vice Captain Guillermo Melendez said. “It’s hosted at Lamar and we teach whoever comes about everything related to robotics. This usually includes building, designing, coding, social media and logging everything into the notebook.”

Recently, Discobots were internationally recognized for the help and work they do in the community as they won awards at the VEX Robotics Competition World Championship.

“My current VEX team is a team combining some of our Lamar students, some Debakey students, some homeschoolers and even some middle schoolers if they wish to join,” Goyal said.”It’s supposed to be an all inclusive team and we compete very well.”

Every year, Discobots competes in robotics competitions like VEX all year and FRC from January to May. Discobots host workshops in the summer for middle schoolers and additional attendees for those interested in getting involved with robotics. Students can learn more about attending these workshops in Rita Graves’ weekly newsletters.