After school on November 7, 2017, Glacier Peak’s robotic team, the Sonic Squirrels, met with Project Unify to design simple robots out of Legos.

The team got the inspiration to start this alliance from King’s High School in Shoreline, Washington. King’s started it after a mother with two daughters, one with special needs and one without but both wanted to be on the robotics team back in 2015. They later went on to win the Chairman’s award at a competition.

“We tried to start this up last year, but we were understaffed and late to start the club,” Gabriel Dupen said.

This year, they will be entering six different competitions with three robots, one robot per team.

They are one of fifteen teams in the Special Olympics Unified Robotics competing. Unified Robotics is addressing the much larger issue of exclusion in the workplace. The founder of Unified Robotics, Delaney Foster, uses the term, “Creating the Norm” to explain her vision for the near future when her classmates and teammates are in STEM careers and actively promoting neurological disabilities. She is hoping to break down barriers between people with disabilities and people without.

Some of the schools that Glacier Peak will be competing against are Roosevelt High School, Franklin High School, Ballard High School, Ingraham High School, Auburn High School, Newport High School, Lake Washington High School, King’s High School, Edmonds Heights K-12, Mariner High School, Eckstein Middle School, and TOPS Middle School. Glacier Peak is hoping to take home a title but they are happy to be competing.

The Special Olympics expresses their desire to bring, “Diversity in schools and the workplace makes our communities stronger.”