Volleyball practice, homework and a daunting one-hour commute have not been deterrents for Manheim Township High School ninth-grader Michael Gallagher, who is the only Lancaster County member of the Out of the Box Robotics team based in Coatesville, Chester County.

Out of the Box Robotics is part of FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), a robotics competition for students in grades seven to 12. Each year, teams compete head-to-head by designing, building and programming a robot to complete a series of assigned tasks.

At local events, teams compete to qualify for the state championship, and from that point, they compete to qualify for the world championship. Out of the Box Robotics is one of only two teams from Pennsylvania that advanced to the FTC World Championship. The event was scheduled to be held in Houston, Texas, from April 20 to 23.

Michael learned about the team from his father's colleague Josh Beauchamp, a former team member who returned to serve the team as a volunteer mentor.

Team members have various duties, including building the robot and programming. Currently, Michael is on the build team. "A lot of teams have specific groups, and we have subgroups like making parts of the robot," he noted. "You may start (in a different group) and migrate to where you are the most useful and have the most fun."

"Next year, I will be programming," Michael added. "Our main programmer is graduating. I'll probably fill in that position with a couple of other people."

For this year's challenge, titled "Freight Frenzy," the teams are exploring transportation, which includes shipping packages, disaster relief delivery and air transit. "(The robot) has to pick up different blocks and balls of different weights and go over terrain, which is made of PVC piping," Michael explained.

The process begins when the robot is designed - first on paper. "The first stage is designing the robot and computer modeling," Michael noted. "In the middle, we get to building, which is more difficult because everything is harder in the physical world."

Perfecting the robot often requires a lot of trial and error and practice runs. "Testing the robot and watching the robot fail and then fixing it is the hardest part," Michael said. "You have to suppress being sad that it failed and (figure out) why it failed."

He added that team members work well together. "We make sure everyone has the time to speak their voice," Michael said. "None of us wants to have our pride get in the way of having a good robot. We have professional conversions about what we want our robot to be."

Michael added that being part of the team is helping him on his way to a professional career. "I've known since I was very little that I wanted to do something with engineering. I have always been interested in math and science," he shared. "I want to be an electrical engineer or an aerospace engineer and maybe attend Virginia Tech."

For more information about Out of the Box Robotics, visit http://www.ftc7244.org.