Jesuit High School Robotics Team Hopes To Reclaim International Title

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - The Jesuit High School robotics team is headed back to the big leagues in hopes of winning an international title once again.

"We had to design everything ourselves; we built everything ourselves," said one team member.

The team is headed to Washington for the competition, which the school won in 2011, and will be one of four high schools competing at the collegiate level.

It won't be easy as the team competes against the very best from all over the world, including schools like Purdue, Georgia Tech and Arizona State.

"It's a lot of planning, testing, of measuring, reorganizing," said junior Alexander Aprea.

Their underwater robot is ready to go, programmed to perform four main tasks.

"The third is taking a measuring device and setting on the seafloor to measure the density of particles and light; fourth is measuring junk in the water," said Aprea.

They have been up against some rough waters along the way.

"Leaks, we have to make sure everything is watertight because we have a lot of electronics down there," said Aprea.

But even with all the troubleshooting, this group of guys is thrilled to be taking their robot all the way.

"If we went to college and studied engineering we'd probably be doing this in real life; it's great practice," said one teammate.

In addition to the robot itself, the boys have written an oral presentation.

The Jesuit robotics team took third place last year.