Highland Park, Illinois, Sister Cities/Puerto Vallarta Sister Cities Student Robotics Collaboration Wins FIRST PLACE Two years ago an idea was born: connect a student robotics team in Highland Park with a student robotics team in our sister city, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Through determination, we found the magical combination: Meta Infinity in Highland Park and Katatroniks in Puerto Vallarta. With guidance from the Highland Park team, the Highland Park Sister Cities Foundation purchased the components to build a robot for the Puerto Vallarta team. Meeting on WhatsApp and Zoom, the students in Highland Park guided the Puerto Vallarta students through the process of constructing and coding their robot. A relationship developed between the two teams and then fate intervened. RoboRAVE, an international robotics competition, was going to be held in Puerto Vallarta in December 2025. Incredibly, the “idea” blossomed into a “What if?” What if the two teams worked together on a robot to be entered into the RoboRAVE competition? The Meta Infinity team presented their proposal to the Highland Park Sister Cities Foundation and the Board voted to sponsor them on their trip to Puerto Vallarta…and the work began. Combining the names of their two teams: Meta Infinity and Katatronics, the students called their combined team Metatroniks. They decided on the problem they wanted their robot to tackle: They wanted to build a robot to help “save the world” by cleaning waste from the ocean.
Meeting weekly on Zoom and What’sApp, the students built and programmed a robot designed to accomplish their goal. Through creativity, problem solving, trial and error, and extensive testing, they accomplished their goal. The Puerto Vallarta Sister Cities Committee and the sponsor of the Katatroniks team in Puerto Vallarta arranged for home-stays for the Highland Park students and their chaperone; the First Bank of Highland Park helped to sponsor the team’s participation in the event. T shirts were designed; the students created a video presentation for the judges and (using a 3D printer) developed small giveaways of their robot to be distributed at the competition-and they were off. The students shared their experience with daily posts on Instagram. (see one post below) One of the founders of RoboRAVE, impressed by their robot and their international collaboration, interviewed them. The result of two years of collaboration, determination, innovation, imagination, and vision culminated in the combined Highland Park and Puerto Team winning FIRST PLACE in the Entrepreneurial Division and earning them a spot at the Japan RoboRAVE World Championship this August. This exchange exemplifies what Sister Cities is all about: making connections, creating opportunities, learning about and respecting cultures, sharing ideas and above all building new friendships.