It's here that students burn hours of their time designing, building and driving their bots in preparation for robotics competitions.

And soon they'll be put to the test. On Saturday, at the Nordby Trades Center at Mitchell Technical Institute, the South Dakota State VRC tournament featuring 31 teams from across the state will be held. And five Mitchell teams from the middle and high school are gearing up for the tournament, looking to earn their place at the top of the leader board, and potentially a ticket to the world competition.

Before the world competition, nationals takes place. But for three of Mitchell's teams, they don't have to worry, as they qualified for the national competition in Council Bluffs, Iowa, earlier in the season. But if they are to win the state competition, they would earn a spot at the world tournament in Kentucky.

Three teams is the most any school can send to nationals each year, according to Josh Renken, the assistant tournament director and supervisor for the middle school teams.

The opening ceremony of the tournament will begin at 9:20 a.m. Saturday in the Nordby Trades Center at MTI. The elimination and final rounds are expected to start around 3:30 p.m.

Renken watched his students since they began building last spring. Every year after the world competition, the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation (REC) unveils the new "game." This is the challenge and task the teams must complete with a robot they designed.

"No two robots are the same," Renken said. "Once they know what the game is, they'll decide what the best design is."

This year's game which is back-and-forth type game, Renken said requires the students manning the robots to move game pieces, such as cubes and other objects over a fence. This could be done by tossing the objects over the fence, or underneath.

And it's up to the student to decide how the robot maneuvers and places the objects on the other side. For many of Mitchell's teams, they went with the tossing idea, rather than a pusher-like robot.

The robots evolve as the season continues, as students work to improve the bots any way they can. Each team keeps an engineering notebook from day one, that provides a day-to-day outlook along with a list of failures and successes.

This allows students to perfect their robot's design, and hopefully, win the rounds they compete.

And for some students, this includes a lot of altering of the robot, sometimes completely changing their original idea.

"The robots evolve over the season," Renken said. "They don't look anything like they did when they started."

With this weekend's tournament only a day away, Renken said he's confident in how his students will perform, and he looks forward to see what other schools designed.

The winner of Saturday's competition will earn a trip to the VEX Robotics World Championships, April 19-25 in Louisville, Kentucky. Prior to this, the three Mitchell teams will participate in the U.S. Open Robotics Championships April 4-8 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with more than 200 other teams from around the country.

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Mitchell students gear up for state robotics competition - Daily Republic