Teams of students from Long Island and all over the world gathered at Hofstra University Saturday to show off robots that they created in just six weeks.

The school hosted the FIRST or "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" Robotics Long Island Regional Competition.

The teams have coaches and mentors, but the students do all of the hands on work to build the robots by themselves.

Matthew Bartsch, a sophomore from Smithtown, has been on a robotics team since middle school. He says the competition has helped shape his life.

“I met a great group of friends, and learned a lot. So I'll probably, hopefully, find my career through this,” said Bartsch.

Taylor Pedley, a senior on the team, agreed, saying that the competition impacted her college decision.

“I entered high school wanting to be an artist or an author because I wanted to be creative. And FIRST showed me that you can be creative in engineering and STEM,” she said.