Students from Arvin High School's drone team are gearing up for an aerial drone competition in Reno, Nevada, and they're the only team representing Kern County.
"All they want to know is, can you unlock the door so they can get busy. They're very focused students," said Sgt. John Lunsford, Arvin High School JROTC instructor.
Vanessa Hernandez is a junior and one of the five members that make up the team.
"So I can show off my driving skills and coding skills, and I wanted to be able to help out other students that might need help on this program," Hernandez said.
Gerardo Ramirez is a freshman and the team's pilot. He says it's been challenging but he's ready for the competition.
"It's pretty difficult, like, to get to the second section of it, but I can mostly do it now," Ramirez said.
"I'm going to be able to fly the drone during in competition and try to get us at the most points," he said.
The team is participating in the 8th Brigade JROTC Aerial Drone Competition that will be held this Friday and Saturday at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada. They're one of 54 teams competing.
Teams will have to navigate their drone through an obstacle course where they will be graded on their skills. For the past two months, the team has trained using a similar course that they'll see in the competition.
"Takes a very steady hand from what I've seen. And they have to do coding and programming and make the drone, for instance, fly by itself, without any controls at all," Lunsford said.
The team leaves Thursday morning for the two-day competition.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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