Central Connecticut State University’s future Combat Robotics club aims to bring a new community to campus with robot fights. 

The club is currently under temporary recognition status and petitioning to become official. At an information panel held in the Student Center on Nov. 21, co-founders John Jairo Zaldivar and Jake Simoes explained the goals and plans for the club for the upcoming semester. Zaldivar said the club is going to be open to a wide variety of people who want to collaborate on a project together. Simoes said that most clubs are a social climate and that is not what the Combat Robotics club will be. 

“We want to do something more ambitious than a social gathering,” Simoes said. “It’s more fun to actually do something.” 

Simoes said that once the club gets enough people, they will then determine what direction the club will go in next semester. He said that the main plan is to build a robot together and enter the combat robot fighting event, the National Havoc Robot League being hosted in Norwalk and hopefully win. 

“There’s a huge prize for philanthropy for the winner,” Simoes said. “If we win, we could do something for the community.” 

Zaldivar said the club is going to be a place to offer a new type of community on campus that will be available to people regardless of their major. He said that making the robot will be educational for everyone who joins and it will be great to do stuff together. 

“It’s going to be rewarding and fun to make something with your own hands,” Zaldivar said. “People can get something out of it.” 

Simoes said that robots are a good way to build a community since this will be a collaborative project to make the best fighting robot they can. He said that with the Combat Robotics club, they are trying gain people’s interest in STEM and to create something new at Central that will last on the Central campus. 

“You don’t have to be an expert,” Simoes said. “We want to cultivate something out of this and spread our curiosity.”