Student Activities & Robotics
Now, what were the students doing about this lack of robotics education? In the 1980s-2000s, there were many pushes for student-run robotics clubs, competitions, and teams to advance their own education in robotics when their universities seemed not to care. Students clearly felt the need to take their robotics education into their own hands to fill the gap in robotics courses and the lack of investment from Poly.
Robotics clubs in 1985 were the earliest ones documented. Clearly, there were almost no non-CS classes in robotics at the time, so it makes sense that students took matters into their own hands to continue robotics advancements, especially if they were noticing other schools making this jump into robotics while their own was trailing behind.
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 1985)
After 1985, the same student initiatives weren’t seen in the yearbooks until the late 90s and 2000s. In 2001, even more than just the robotics club was emerging; a LEGO robotics competition in December of 2001 was also established as a student outlet for all their robotics passions.
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2001)
(Polytechnic University, December 2001)
However, in the student yearbook, robotics is mentioned elsewhere as well, beyond just student activities. In the “Science and Technology” of the year section, the 2001 PolyWog mentions robotics innovation contributed by Brandeis University about their robot that can design and build other robots with “minimal help from humans” (PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2001).
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2001)
Even in Poly’s own 2001 yearbook, Poly acknowledges robotics advancements at other universities that surpass its own. These universities were of similar rank or prestige to Poly at the time, sometimes less, yet were able to make front-page news for scientific and technological discoveries. It really goes to show that, even though Brooklyn Poly has finally started to realize the importance of robotics development and the initiatives students are creating for themselves, they still have not fully caught up to other universities, despite being much older than them.
A year later, Brooklyn Poly continued to host robotics competitions for students, even though it was just showcasing preliminary LEGO robotics; this is a push in the right direction, nonetheless.
(Polytechnic University, April 2002)
The student robotics activities continued to grow and remained an integral part of the student activities section from 2003 to 2009. PolyBots becomes the school’s main robotics club, participating in competitions and interdisciplinary robotics research projects to give students more “hands-on experience” and engineering experience they can find in the workforce. According to the 2009 website, retrieved from the Way Back Machine, “PolyBOTS: PolyBOTS is a robotics club that aims to provide an interdisciplinary environment for the engineering and construction of original robotic and mechanical devices—[email protected]” (Contributors, 2009).
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2003)
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2003)
In the 2003 yearbook, robotics becomes a feature, with a student-professor robotics project taking the spotlight on page 6 before the main yearbook begins. This begins to show Poly's use of robotics in advertising to promote the school and make it look more innovative.
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2003)
Twenty to twenty-four years later, the robotics club still stands at Poly, being advertised in larger and larger sections in the student activities section of the preceding yearbooks.
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2005)
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2006)
Fun fact, one of the individuals above is Christopher DiMauro (front black shirt, medium length hair, no glasses), who is currently my robotics advisor for the Vertically Integrated Project that I am the Vice-Captain of at NYU Tandon called RoboMaster/ARC Robotics, and is also now the advisor of the current PolyBots robotics club today, in 2026. Clearly, the robotics initiatives at Poly weren’t grandiose, but were making enough of an impact for previous Alumni to stay involved with the activities past graduation, over 20 years later.
2009 is the oldest yearbook, featuring the most robotics information throughout. There are multiple pages on robotics clubs, the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition and STEM program, which is still active today, and a MARS robot senior project.
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2009)
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2009)
(PolyWog Polytechnic Yearbook, 2009)