In September 2023, Walnut High School’s Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR) Team presented and attracted students to the competition through a live simulated racing demonstration on the Berkeley Major Map. Each year Walnut High hosts a club fair event for all students to promote a specific organization. In addition, Walnut High ROAR participated in the local Diamond Bar STEAM Fair targeted at children in the community. Those interested were able to use the Carla interface and navigate within the map while also learning more about the Berkeley initiative.
Walnut High School’s team is unique in that it is currently the only ambassador program in Southern California to create a pipeline between the high school and collegiate students at UC Berkeley remotely. The Walnut High School ROAR team is managed by the Computer Science Club, which hosts free workshops and classes for middle school and high school students who are interested in computer science and want to acquire the technical expertise to participate in competitions like ROAR.
The Ambassador Program was established to increase the presence of AI and autonomous driving research in the respective local communities. Each ROAR ambassador will be directly teamed up with one faculty member and one graduate student at Berkeley. Applications for the upcoming year are due by October 13, 2023. More information about the Ambassador Program can be found at https://roar.berkeley.edu/ambassador-program/ .
Written by John Yang and Harris Song, Walnut High School ROAR, with Mr. Nick Blackford advising the Computer Science Club. Thank you to Mrs. Jenny Alegre, and Professor Allen Y. Yang, PhD for their contributions to establishing the program.