Ken Wettstein, Grant Del Collo, and Colton Del Collo of Maurice River Twp. are all on the same
robotics team, the Robotecs. They have been meeting since September at least every week in
Bridgeton in the Cumberland County College STEAMworks building. There are a total of seven
boys on the team that travel from all over South Jersey. The Robotecs are a South Jersey
Robotics (SJR) team registered with FIRST® Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of
Science and Technology). They were also a brand-new FIRST Lego League (FLL) team this
year.

FLL teams are required to research a real-world engineering challenge, develop a solution, and
compete with Lego Mindstorm robots of their own design, all while embracing and displaying the
seven core FLL values and learning 21st Century skills. Their challenge for 2016-17 centered
around animals and they selected the horseshoe crab. They worked with the American Littoral
Society, the US Fish and Wildlife commission, the makers of the Horshoe crab SOS mobile app,
and were even been in contact with the office of Congressman Frank LoBiondo!

The Robotecs worked hard to design, build, and program their robot, Axel for competition. Their
hard work paid off as this rookie team advanced from the qualifier event to compete with only 12
other teams at the Rowan South Jersey District competition.
The Robotecs continue to meet and work together, even though their season has ended,
because learning doesn’t stop just because competition does!