A group of students from a high school in Detroit built a robot that will throw out the ceremonial first pitch on Wednesday, August 22nd, at the Detroit Tigers game against the Toronto Blue Jays.
A group of 30 students spent the summer to develop Cy-ber Young, a robot that will get into the baseball history as the first robot built by teenagers to get the game opening honor at a Major League Baseball. The one to try and catch the pitch will be the Tigers’ beloved mascot PAWS.
“It’s a robot designed to throw out the pitch. It’s about the size of a shopping cart and uses a big scuba tank as the main source of power,” said Colm Boren, an engineer and mentor for the FIRST Robotics organization.
The robot is controlled with a joystick and a laptop, and students can also set the trajectory and velocity of the ball. The robot will be driven on the field behind home plate, over the first base line out to the front mound, and the teens will aim toward the plate, where PAWS will be standing to catch the ball.
“We haven’t actually measured the farthest distance yet but I’d say at least a few hundred feet. We actually were considering asking the Detroit Tigers if we could throw the first pitch from the outfield, which we’re confident we could do, but they, for the sake of PAWS’ safety, they didn’t want us to try that,” said Boren.
The game will begin at 7:05 p.m. and the ceremonial pitch is expected at 6:35 p.m. During the game the robot will be on display so that fans could get a closer look at it.
This is really neat!