Local robotics teams battle in Houston for championship – Knoxville News Sentinel

HIGH SCHOOL TEAMS CREATE AND BATTLE ROBOTSRobots battle in Knoxville | 2:56

Thirteen local high school robotics teams joined 35 more for this year's regional robotics competition at Thompson-Boling Arena. Wochit

1 of 2

The 2017 Smoky Mountains Regional Robotics Competition at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville hosted hundreds of high school students whose teams competed with their own, individually built robots. Andrew Capps

2 of 2

Members of the Secret City Wilbots work on their robot between the final rounds of the 2017 FIRST Robotics Smoky Mountain Regional Competition on March 25.(Photo: Andrew Capps / News Sentinel)Buy Photo

High school robotics teams from Oak Ridge High School, Farragut High School, Hardin Valley Academy, L&N STEM Academyand South Doyle High School are battlingin Houston this week for the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)Robotics World Championship.

The five teams previously competed with nine other local teams and 35 from the broader region at the 2017 FIRST RoboticsSmoky Mountain Regional Competition at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.

Oak Ridge High School was a finalist team at the Smoky Mountain Regional and won an engineering inspiration award. Farragut High School won the overall competition at the Smoky Mountain Regionallast month, and Hardin Valley Academy won another regional competition in Palmetto.

However, teams don't have to place in the finals to go to the world championships. They can get there by winning other awards too. South Doyle High School qualified for the finals when itwon two rookie awards for its first year in the competition: the Rookie All Star Award and the Highest Rookie Seed Award.

In addition to winning the Palmetto regional, Hardin Valley Academy won the Chairman's Award at the Smoky Mountain Regional for having a well-rounded team businessand performing well in outreach projects and competitions.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

"It never gets old," David Nuttall, the Hardin Valley Academy team mentor, said."It's always a challenge. This is our first year tochange out our drive team, and we have the very good fortune that this team is just as good as our previous one."

Nuttall, who is a composites engineer at the ORNL Manufacturing Demonstration Facility,is one of about 15 scientists, researchers and engineers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory who mentor Knoxville-area robotics teams. He began mentoring about six years ago when his son was a student on Hardin Valley's team and has continued with the program ever since.

"There's that sense of pride that you feel like you might have touched their lives to help them along," he said. "To see them from one year to the next year, to the next year, really, it's all about maturing. They're still high school kids who mature into pre-adults and adults who are ready to go off to college, and it's just really fascinating and fun."

UT-Battelle supports 11 regional teams. Scientists, researchers and engineers at TVA and from Y-12's contractor, Consolidated Nuclear Security, also mentor teams across the state.

As many as 15 from as far as Johnson City participate in ORNL "Lunch and Learns" during their robot building season. Teams show up on Saturdays to eat lunch and talk about their projects with each other.

"Every team representative tries to get up and share what they've learned this week, what they need help with and what support they can give other teams, and if they need support we can reach out and help them too," Nuttall said.

Helping rival teams is not uncommon in the FIRST robotics program, which teachestenets like gracious professionalism and"coopetition," a term FIRST coined that means bettering others to better yourself.

ORNL also helps teamsuse 3-D printers to print parts for their robots at theManufacturing Demonstration Facility. Claus Daniel, the Farragut High Schoolteam mentor, said the Hardin Valley Academy team worked with ORNL and First Robotics to donate 4503-D printers to teams across the country thatdon't have the resources to print robotic parts.

"Everyone wants to win on their own merit, rather than wanting to win because someone else had a disadvantage," saidDaniel, who also directs ORNL's sustainable transportation program.

Daniel is on the ground at the Houston world championships with the Farragut High School team he mentors. FIRST holds two world championships each year to accommodate its growing number of teams.

Teams from the Southern and Western United States, the Middle East, South Africa and China are participating in Houston this week. Next week, teams from the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, Europe and other parts of Asia will compete in St. Louis.

"We see the sametenets exercised internationally here," Daniel said. His team's booth in Houston is neighbored by teams from Mexico, Turkey and China. "For teams who are coming from really far away, it can get expensive to send all of their stuff over."

The Turkish robotics team looked Daniel's Farragut team up before the competition and sent itssoon-to-be neighbors a request for help with supplies.

"They said, 'Hey, we can't send everything we have, can you help us out?' So we got together with a few other teams to make sure they got their tools, their fire extinguishersand things like that," he said. "So, they only had to bring the robot, and everything else comes from other teams helping them out so they can do their best too."

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: http://knoxne.ws/2p0Ee3s

Read the original post:

Local robotics teams battle in Houston for championship - Knoxville News Sentinel