Out of the 139 robotics teams that competed this year for a spot in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Tech Challenge (FTC) Massachusetts state championships, only 36 could earn a place. A two-year-old team that meets for only a couple of hours every Sunday just secured their ticket.

Cloud 9 Robotics was founded in 2024 by Elana Braun-Jones, Eva Foreman, Shivam Das and Jack He. It is a locally run robotics team made specifically to accommodate students who are interested in learning about robotics but have other out-of-school commitments during typical club meeting times. On March 15, they will compete in the Massachusetts state championship at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, with the hopes of qualifying for regionals, and eventually the FTC world championship.

Brookline parent and coach Taylor Braun-Jones has been working with the team since its creation. Taylor Braun-Jones said that requirements for the robots change year to year, but the general structure of the competition remains consistent.

“It’s a two and a half minute event with the first 30 seconds being the autonomous period. You push a start button, and then you can’t do anything else for the next 30 seconds, so you have to program your robot to be smart enough to do whatever the task is,” Taylor Braun-Jones said. “That’s followed by the remote controlled period for two minutes. Here is where you need a lot of practice by the driver on your team.”

Taylor Braun-Jones said that the goal for this year was to learn a lot and try to be as competitive as possible, but they had no expectations in terms of how far they would make it in the competition. However, after the initial phase of competition ended and they entered playoffs, the team was pleasantly surprised by their performance.

“Everyone gets ranked, and then there’s the process of forming an alliance for the playoffs,” Taylor Braun-Jones said. “I think one of the coolest experiences for the team was when we talked with the number one ranked team and they wanted to partner with us.”

Senior Elana Braun-Jones is one of the captains and founders of Cloud 9 Robotics, and said she started learning about robotics her sophomore year through the Robotics I class offered at the high school.

“Cloud 9 formed because there was a BHS robotics team, and some of us wanted to do a little more,” Elana Braun-Jones said. “We formed a team and eventually we held elections and my friend (Eva Forman) and I were voted captains.”

Junior Nikita Semyannikov is a member of Cloud 9 Robotics and said he joined because he had friends on the team and wanted to put his computer programming skills to use. Semyannikov said that the team has taught him valuable lessons about teamwork.

“When working with a group of people you can’t really do everything yourself; you have to coordinate with everyone else,” Semyannikov said. “All of us added a little something to the robot, and now we see it doing well in competitions and working how we intended, so that’s just a nice reward to see after weeks of work.”

Elana Braun-Jones said that on the team, she does a little bit of everything, including programming, building and 3D modeling. Alongside her work on the robot, Elana Braun-Jones said that part of her responsibility as a captain is making sure everyone gets a job they like.

“Making sure that everyone is doing something that they want to is something that’s really important to me,” Elana Braun-Jones said. “I make sure that no one is pigeonholed into any one responsibility and everyone’s able to move across different fields.”

Semyannikov said that even though people on the team have commitments other than Cloud 9 Robotics, the community stays strong.

“I think everyone on our team does something outside of Cloud 9, like a sport,” Semmyanikov said. “The fact that this is somewhere that we can all focus on [one thing] together as a group definitely helps build the culture.”

Elana Braun-Jones said that ultimately Cloud 9 Robotics was founded around inclusivity for people with any level of prior experience in robotics.

“You take from it what you’re willing to give,” Elana Braun-Jones said. “So long as you’re committed to making it work for you, absolutely, you can join now.”