In the robotics room, one student toils away, making sure everything is running smoothly and all his teammates are well. This is Rodrigo Del Carpio (11), the captain of the FRC Robotics team.
Del Carpio was born and raised in Hawaii and has been doing robotics for three years, since he was a freshman at Kalani High School. Del Carpio is proud to be a captain in his junior year. With the hope of one day becoming a mechanical engineer, he works hard to help his team perform well.
Del Carpio aims for his team to qualify for the world robotics championships, but since the qualifications changed, it has become much more difficult for teams to qualify.
He explains that teams now have to earn points by winning awards and placing high in competitions to qualify for world championships, meaning the robotics team needs to be “well-rounded.”
“I think making sure that, like, everyone on the team is feeling all right [is the hardest part about being a captain],” Del Carpio says. “Because like, you can have a very, like, accomplished team that, like, gets a lot of things done and is super successful outwardly, but if people on the team don’t feel happy or if they are like, really mad about a lot of things, and they don’t want to be around the people, they’re around, that’s, like, really hard to deal with.”
The advisor to the FRC team, Mr. Brian Silver, praises Del Carpio.
“He is a dynamic young man who puts a lot of his skill and talent into this robotics program,” Silver says.
As a captain, he tries his best to ensure his team’s success.
“He’ll jump in and help out as much as anyone else,” Silver adds.
He has played the piano for 11 years and performs in a band.
Del Carpio’s musical career offers him unique skills to use in robotics, having him apply art in a science-based area.
“When I’m going through an issue in robotics, sometimes I have to improvise, and that thinking that I get from doing music, because I play a lot of jazz music, which is a lot of improvisation.” Del Carpio says.
The Robotics Head of Outreach, Katie Ta (11), says Rodrigo is “passionate, innovative, and resilient.”
“We work together to plan events for the team,” Ta explains. “Rod works more in the technical area … I work in more of the outreach, social areas.”
Del Carpio tries to work hard to balance his music, robotics duties and academic schoolwork; he keeps post-its and notebooks full of lists of what he needs to do.
“If I have a concert coming up for my piano recital, I have to devote a lot of time to practice my instrument,” Del Carpio says. “But if I have like a state competition for robotics, I have to lock in, I stay at school till, like, 7:00 [p.m] to do everything.”
Despite juggling all of these activities, Del Carpio has an optimistic attitude.
“Don’t give up,” Del Carpio says. “The reason that I say that is because a lot of the time, people get a lot farther just by trying. There’s people that just quit early on in a lot of things. And it’s not that, they couldn’t do it. It’s just they chose not to, because they give up. So if you’d never choose to give up on something, chances are you get a lot farther than if you didn’t. And even if you don’t achieve your long-term success, you still learned more while failing, right? So it never hurts to keep trying.”
