On Board Online • April 6, 2026

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief

A team of Corning-Painted Post High School students called the Cyber Wolverines placed first in a recent regional competition called "The Lord of the Robots," which was inspired by The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

During five-minute "quests," teams used catapults to knock down towers of cups and try to drop a ball into "Mount Doom" at the far end of a field.

The event was affiliated with Unified Robotics, a Seattle-based program that partners students with intellectual disabilities and peers from general education as they tackle challenges involving engineering and computer programming. Competitions take place in 18 regions, globally.

The founder of the organization, Delaney Locher, began creating inclusive competitions in 2015, when she was a high school student. Her sister, Kendall Foster, has autism, and Delaney, now a Microsoft employee, has been a lifelong advocate of inclusive education.

The Corning-Painted Post (CPP) club is part of Empire State Unified Robotics, which was founded in May 2025.

"You can learn a lot of new skills and learn about what you could do after you get out of school," said CPP senior Jeffrey Lanphear. "It was cool to see how our robot would go and learn about programming our motors. I liked how we could ask other teams to help us, or we could help other teams and fix them together."

Twenty-four students participated in the pilot season of Unified Robotics at CPP High School, which also offers Unified Bowling, Basketball and Soccer, as well as Unified Art and Physical Education programs.

The Empire State Unified Robotics region was founded by FIRST Tech Challenge Team TARDIS 5356, a local high school robotics team sponsored by Corning Incorporated. Team TARDIS wrote a grant proposal to the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and received $7,500 to support the first two years of Unified Robotics in the area.

"The competition was super fun," said Mira Simons, a freshman member of Team TARDIS and the student lead for Empire State Unified Robotics.

"Our program helped people see they could do STEM," said Simons, whose father, Mike, is a CPP teacher who organized the CPP event. She said new friendships also resulted, "and that's really special."

Team TARDIS plans to introduce Unified Robotics to Elmira, Horseheads and other schools this spring and prepare for a new season in September 2026. Empire State Unified Robotics is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to promoting inclusive and collaborative science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education through hands-on, competitive robotics programs. ESUR is a region of Unified Robotics (unifiedrobotics.org), which was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Team TARDIS 5356 is a community-based FIRST Tech Challenge team in the Excelsior Region of New York sponsored by Corning Incorporated.