ARLINGTON — The Arlington High School NeoBots 2903 Robotics Team held a PC recycling drive fundraiser at AHS on Sept. 22, as a way of financially supporting the team as they begin to gear up for their upcoming competitions.

The team partnered with local business PC Recycle and gathered old electronic and electrical equipment from the community, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Members of the community donated everything from old computers to TVs, keyboards to stereos and more. The team loaded up the recyclables in the PC Recycle truck, and PC Recycle is set to donate the worth of the items to the team.

“This PC Recycle event is one of our main fundraising activities,” said Josh Rodriguez, one of the team members. “We are planning on going to two regional competitions this year. The only limitation is money. But our hope is that if we don’t make it through one, we’ll make it through the other.”

The top three teams in any given regional competition are advanced to nationals, and although the NeoBots are a successful robotics team, with many regional appearances, they have yet to get to the national competition.

“The way the competition works is they announce a mission in January,” said Steve Smith, a team mentor. “They get six weeks to build a robot with a basic kit of parts and then they have to acquire the other parts that they might need.”

But building robots isn’t the only task. “They have to gather around and say, ‘How are we going to do this?’ It’s strategy, business skills, public relations and media relations. It’s more than just a robot,” Smith said.

The team is supported by a number of local and regional businesses including Ablemark, Action Sports, Boeing, Crazyhouse Graphics, Datalight, Doodlebug Sportz, Kiwanis Club of Arlington, Platt, Rotary Club of Arlington, Zodiac Aerospace and more.

For more information on supporting the Arlington robotics team, visit www.neobots2903.org.