On March 3, the Ward Melville Iron Patriots held their annual Showcase Night to unveil their robot, Artifactor, for the 2026 first robotics competition. Starting on January 10, members of the robotics team worked to design, build, wire, and program a fully functional robot to compete in a unique three-on-three game, released each season. This year’s game, dubbed REBUILT, centers around collecting and shooting balls into a hub while managing other strategic elements such as defense and climbing.
During showcase night, captains Aditya Kumar and Andrew Samulyak, as well as team mentor Benjamin Flaiz presented Artifactor to an audience of parents, teachers and administrators. The presentation showcased not only the engineering work that members put into building the robot, but also the team’s outreach efforts in the Three Village community.
The robot itself demonstrated several key abilities during the event, including intaking, indexing and shooting balls into the hub, as well as moving around on the auditorium stage. The Ward Melville Iron Patriots will compete with their finished robot at the upcoming Finger Lakes Regional on March 11 at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they hope to qualify for the national tournament.
