Winston Churchill Robotics Team

Who We Are


In September 2003, the Winston Churchill Robotics Team, Churchill Robotics Team for short, was conceived and formed.

Beginning as a small elite group, we have expanded and taken in more members.
Originally formed to only compete in the Botball Tournament, we have broadened our scope, encouraging and inviting opportunities for more robotics competitions.


What is Botball?

Botball, or the Botball Educational Robotics Program, is a robotics competition that offers a 'hands-on learning' experience in science, technology, engineering, and math. Designed for middle school and high students, Botball is held regionally and nationally, and there is now a Collegiate Botball Tournament.

Students design, build, and program their own mobile autonomous robot, meaning that there are no remote controls or human input - everything is done using motors and sensors to manuever around the game board and score points.

Botball is a peaceful and constructive robotics competition - the team which scores the most points wins. These points are accumulated from the general robot-running competition, including the seeding and double elimination rounds, and a website competition (which is not to be confused with the Research Website Competition).

Churchill will compete in the Greater D.C. Regional Botball Tournament, along with an estimated 58 other teams. This Regional Botball Tournament is held in May, while the National Botball Tournament is held in late June. The National Botball Tournament is separate from the Regional Botball Tournament.


What We Do

The Botball competition requires all kinds of skills: programming in C, building efficient and sensible robots, and web designing. We are currently giving tutorials on how to program in Interactive C, the language used for the Botball robots, so as to prepare ourselves when we receive the Botball competition kit.

There is also a Botball Research Website Competition. Before the Regional Botball Tournament, Botball holds an optional research competiion, in which a registered Botball team may gather research and information about the given research topic, for example, drilling for astrobiological purposes. Then, after the research has been compiled, students create websites for the research and submit these websites. These websites are scored according to certain rules and guidelines, and are awarded according to score. This score has no effect on the general Botball competition in May.