Category Archives: Robotics

Alberta's top young engineers faced off in Edmonton this weekend with robots they designed and built themselves.

Telus World of Science hosted25 teams from middle schools and high schools across the province for the First Tech Challenge.

The students spent months working on their robots.Each teamhad two minutes in a ring on Sunday to show what it could do.

Trevor Dawyd, who attendsLillian Osborne High School in Edmonton, said there's a lot of pressure on the teams to get their robots to pick up little plastic balls and shoot them accurately into a round hoop in the short time frame.

"In two minutes, we try to get as many points as possible," he said.

His team's robot, which, like all the teams' robots, was supposed to haveboth self-operating and control-operating options, struggledin the early round with the autonomousfunction.

Dawyd said they took what they learned there to make improvements.

"We've learned troubleshooting skills and then also working with teammates to get along and overcoming obstacles,"he said.

Connor Bresee, who attends Lacombe Composite High School, said his team also had difficultywith the autonomous function.

"We just didn't turn it on because it has a chance to make the robot's driver-controlled one, which does work, not work, which was unfortunate," Bresee said.

He said the process, which has basically been one of trial and error,has taught him the value of not giving up.

"Resiliency and determination is a lot of what I learned today," Breseesaid.

"All the pieces to make it work really well are there, but they need to be refined so that they're more accurate."

Jennifer Gemmell, the program manager of Telus World of Science's science garage, said the competition gives students a taste of what engineering and robotics could be like as a career.

"There's lots of creativity. There's lots of different ways to express yourself with your robot. There's lots of different ways to complete the same challenge," Gemmel said.

"It's a really unique and exciting and modern way of kids getting to do something that will actually have an effect later on."

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Young Alberta engineers face off in robotics showdown - CBC.ca

The Van Wert robotics Team won medals over the weekend at the state championship. They will now advance to the North Super-Regional competition. (Photo courtesy of Bob Spath)

The team overcame a couple losses in early rounds, persevering and eventually landing a partnership with the number two team going into the semi-finals. After sweeping the first best of three semi-finals, the team faced the top seeded team and, after losing the first match in the finals, the Van Wert High School robotics team along with the robotics team called TBD from Aurora, Ohio, took the final two matches.

Only five teams from Ohio advance to the next level; winning the state championship advances the Van Wert team to the North Super-Regional competition in Iowa at the end of March where the top teams from 11 states will compete for coveted spots in the World Championship.

Coaches Zane McElroy and Bob Spath are thrilled to have the opportunity to represent Van Wert at the Super-Regional competition.

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Cougar robotics team advance to Super-Regionals - Times Bulletin

ACWORTH Ten Cornerstone Preparatory Academy students worked like a well-oiled machine last semester by building a robot that took home the first trophy for the schools robotics team at a regional competition.

The fifth- and sixth-grade students from the private kindergarten to 12th grade school in Acworth joined forces to become Stormbots Cornerstones first Lego Robotics team this school year.

The team took home its first trophy, celebrating the teams good sportsmanship, at a Georgia Institute of Technology-sponsored competition in December in Roswell, the first the team had participated in.

Students programmed a robot no bigger than a shoe box to perform tasks such as pushing, pulling and grabbing small objects, said team member David Baines, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Kennesaw.

In addition to programming the robot before the competition, the students created a five-minute skit to perform for the competitions judges.

Theres a lot more to (robotics) said fifth-grader Isaac Sanchez, 10, of Acworth.

Teams had to present a problem and solution for an environmental issue that affects both animals and humans to satisfy the competitions Animal Allies theme.

The Cornerstone teams skit addressed the possible extinction of honey bees, which is predicted to severely impact humans, said David.

After (honey bees are) extinct, (mankind) will have less than four years of life left, he said.

The skit featured fifth-graders Madelyn Beatty and Sarah Sanabia dressed as bees while fifth-grader Keaton McCollum performed in a head-to-toe yellow outfit as pollen. Patrick Garner, an 11-year-old sixth-grader, performed in a beekeeper outfit provided by Kennesaws Hometown Honey.

Cornerstone won the core values award for their teamwork, and their robots performance landed the team a ticket to a super regionals competition.

The team finished its season after competing in the super regionals on Jan. 14.

With the season over, the fifth-graders are buzzing to continue building the team next year and bring home more trophies.

Cornerstone Prep has an enrollment of 480 students and was founded in 2004.

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Cornerstone Prep robotics team brings home trophy in first year - MDJOnline.com

Jerry Lackey, Special to the Standard-Times Published 2:20 p.m. CT Feb. 12, 2017 | Updated 18 hours ago

The Robotics Competition at the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo.(Photo: contributed)

For the second year, Robotics Competition takes the spotlight Monday at the 85th San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo in the Auto Wrangler Livestock Pavilion.

The popular sport is open for 4-H and FFA teams, plus public, private and home-school teams.

Registration is from 8:30 to 10 a.m., and the first round starts at 10:10 for juniors in grades 3-5. Intermediates and seniors will follow. Each division will have two rotations.

Monday at the San Angelo Fairgrounds is perhaps at a slower pace, as barns are cleaned and prepared for the next wave of livestock. The Wells Fargo Pavilion Commercial Exhibits, Creative Arts Building and midway food vendors open at 10 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m. The Alon Carnival will be open from 5-11 p.m.

Tuesday is move-in day for Junior Market Barrow in the swine section of the Auto Wrangler Livestock Pavilion. Across midway at the 1st Community Credit Union Spur Arena, Ag Mechanics Show entries will be setting up starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Judges will spend Wednesday evaluating and placing an expected number of entries of more than 600.

Theres much more stock show and four more rodeo performances in this final week. The stock show will culminate with the Junior Premium Sale at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and the rodeos last performance will also be Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with the $100,000 Chute-Out.

Meanwhile, during a lull in competition while new entries arrive, this would be a good time to highlight the Ambassador program which plays a very important part in the SASSRA program, not only during rodeo time but year around.

Some of us remember when the primary function of the Ambassadors was to set pivots for the grand entry and post colors for the National Anthem. Since that time the program has grown to 12 members on the drill team.

These days, the ambassadors perform fast-paced drills during rodeo performances in San Angelo, and around the Lone Star State. The group is required to attend numerous, extensive practices year round to ensure the drills go off without a hitch.

Drill team members must be excellent riders and horsewomen. Page Allison, a junior at Wall High School, is captain. Lauren Feller, who attends Irion County High School in Mertzon, is co-captain.

Other ambassadors include: Shayleigh Albert, Miles Junior High; Mikaela Avila, Wall student; Jordayn Berryhill, Bronte High School; Caylee Hardin, Christoval High School; Susannah Mann, Christoval 8th grader; Lana Mitchell, Christoval senior; Logan Price, Lake View High School sophomore; Maricela Rojas, Christoval senior; Daisy Shivers, Grape Creek High School; Abby Walker, Christoval 8th grader; and Hanna Weatherly, Bronte High School senior.

Jerry Lackey(Photo: Standard-Times file photo)

Jerry Lackey is agriculture editor emeritus. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net .

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Robotics Competition slated for Monday - San Angelo Standard Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Ford Motor (F) is spending $1 billion to take over a robotics startup to acquire more of the expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021.

The big bet announced Friday comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon Universitys robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander.

Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google- now known as Waymo - and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed up to launch Argo late last year. Argo had been considering whether to raise money from venture capitalists, the conventional fundraising channel for startups, before opting to become an independent subsidiary of Ford instead.

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Ford is spreading its $1 billion investment over a five-year period.

The alliance between Argo and Ford aims to combine the spunk and dexterity of a technologically savvy startup with the financial muscle and manufacturing know-how of a major automaker.

The unusual deal marks the next step in Fords journey toward building a vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pad by 2021 - a vision that CEO Mark Fields laid out last summer.

The decision to turn to Argo for help is a tacit acknowledgement that Ford wouldnt be able to pull it off on its own.

This is likely a realization that Ford is behind relative to companies like GM, Audi, Volvo, Waymo and Uber, and is trying to catch up, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor who leads the schools autonomous vehicle research.

Ford is counting on Salesky and Rander to hire about 200 employees during the next year while working on the core technology of its autonomous vehicle - the virtual driver system.

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That will serve as cars brains, eyes, ears and senses, said Raj Nair, Fords chief technical officer who also leads the companys product development.

Competitors such as NVIDIA have developed artificial intelligence that learns about different situations as its tested on roads, something that is almost essential for an autonomous car to function in heavy traffic on city streets.

In return for its funding, Argo will design its driverless system exclusively for Ford and then have a chance to license the technology to other automakers in the future.

If Argos system turns out to be far ahead of anything else on the market, the subsidiary could eventually be worth substantially more than it is now. Argo employees, who will work from offices in Pittsburgh, Michigan and the Silicon Valley, will be given stock in the subsidiary as part of their compensation packages so they will be enriched if their Argos technology becomes a hot commodity.

Ford isnt the first company to spend huge sums to obtain more experience and skills in robotics. Uber bought autonomous trucking startup Otto for an estimated $680 million last summer primarily to get Ottos engineers on its team working on driverless vehicles. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, another former Google engineer, is now overseeing Ubers testing of driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona.

2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Ford invests $1B in robotics startup in driverless car quest - CBS News

The challenge handed to them months ago was to make a robot that would earn points by shooting balls into two corners of a field and into a middle vestibule.

And now, the robots they have spent nearly six months building will compete at a statewide competition.

Center Groves FIRST Tech Challenge teams Panic in the Build Room 8149 and Cyber Storm 6190 will compete at a state competition later this month.

Fourteen-year-old Kris Huff and mentor Dave Stevenson work to finish up the installation of a new motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. The Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 will compete in a state competition later this month. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Thirteen-year-old Jacob Tallman programs a change in the movements of his team's robot on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. The Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 will compete in a state competition later this month. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 watch as their robot shoots a ball toward a target on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 work to replace a faulty motor on their robot Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

L-R Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 members 15-year-olds Ethan Matei and Josh Stevenson work together to replace a faulty motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 member 15-year-old Ethan Matei attaches a plug to the end of a motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

A cellphone is used to control the robot of Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 practice using their robot on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

A cellphone and video game controllers are used to control the robot of Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 members work together to replace a faulty motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

The junior varsity teams are made up of mostly eighth and ninth grade students who can later join the FIRST Red Alert team at Center Grove High School that is mostly sophomore and upper class students. The junior varsity teams earned a berth to state by placing among the top three or four teams at qualifying events across the state, mentor Mark Horne said.

In September, the 28 students, split between the two teams, got their task at the same time as other teams across the world. No blueprints on what the robot should look like or how to build it were shared.

Students had to come up with every aspect of their robot themselves, said Imogen Horne, a freshmen and team captain for Panic in the Build Room.

We figured out what parts of the game we wanted to do, she said.

Then, they got to work.

Students split up into groups and each group came up with a few ideas for one part of the robot. Then, the team came together and decided which ideas were the best and used those as the blueprint of their robot.

We picked the best ideas to build the prototype, she said.

The robots have one cellphone strapped to the top and a second cellphone with a controller allows the students to control their robot.

Now that the state competition is a few weeks away, students may make improvements to their prototype, versus building another robot from scratch, Horne said.

In the past few months, students had to run their robot and decide what worked and what ideas they could come up with to improve their creation, said Annalise Tugan, an eighth-grader at Center Grove Middle School North.

It was a lot of trial and error to put it together and make right, she said.

Their Cyberstorm robot cost $15 to make, with most of the parts coming from recycled parts from past years, said Walker Grove, an eighth-grade student at Center Grove Middle School Central.

Students must make the decisions on how to build their robots to do what they want them to do. Any parts they cant salvage from past projects can be ordered at specialty robotic part websites, students said.

And students must stick to the budget. Each team gets around $5,000 for their season, with money coming from sponsorships and student fundraising. Most of the budget is used up with registration fees for competition, with some competitions costing a few thousand dollars for students to participate in, Horne said.

About 162 students participate in the robotics program district-wide and even students who dont find themselves drawn to engineering or actually building the robot can find a purpose on the robotics team doing other jobs, such as marketing and fundraising, Horne said. The teams work out of the school districts new innovation center, with their own separate area.

There are a lot of different aspects to it, he said.

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Center Grove robotics team headed to state competition - Daily Journal

The Eagletronics Robotics Team at Alice Shaw Elementary has been hard at work preparing to showcase their newest invention an alert to save wolves to the First Lego League.

Every year, the First Lego League determines a theme for the year that students have to design their competition projects around this year it's Animal Allies.

The yearly challenge has three facets: the robotic challenge, in which a team-built robot has to complete an obstacle course designed by the League; core values, which is how the students use teamwork and character traits like solution finding and respect while engaging in the robotic challenge; and a final project.

The Eagletronics team was meeting every Wednesday at lunch and after school on Fridays, as well as collaborating with a robotics team in New Mexico, to complete their project to save the wolves in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Our radio activated guard box has been modified with an infrared sensor for thermal detection of wolves, said Shaws robotics team adviser Valerie Trenev.

Trenev explained why the team decided to devote their project to helping wolves.

Wolves, unfortunately, are targeted as predators in the wild, Trenev said. They go to a ranchers property and eat their sheep or cattle. The wolves are a problem because theyre going in to the areas where the livestock and cattle are. The ranchers lose a lot of money when their livestock gets eaten, so they get really mad and shoot the wolves.

Were noticing a comeback of the wolves, she said. They were nearly exterminated in the early 1900s and now were seeing a huge comeback. Now, where they graze on federal land, were seeing a huge problem.

She explained that the presence of cattle drive away deer, which are typically what the wolves feed on. So, since they cant hunt deer, the wolves go after livestock on federal ranches, where there are typically no fences or boundaries for livestock.

The box is designed to sound alarms and strobe lights when it is activated by body heat as it crosses certain perimeters. Their hope is that by scaring the wolves, or other predators, they will be deterred from hunting livestock which will in turn save the wolves lives.

After competing in a regional competition through the FLL, the Eagletronics team came in the Top 25 out of 376 teams in Southern California. Although they didnt make the final cut, the team said they did a good job about spreading the word to other teams.

The project also won an award at the local competition the team entered.

After news spread about Eagletronics invention, FLL did a shout out blast about the team and their project that went to 25,000 teams around the world, leading a team out of New Mexico that is also working on a project about wolves, to reach out and offer help.

Eagletronics has been Facetiming the New Mexico team for development and technical ideas and support.

While Trenev said shes not sure when the project will actually be completed and showcased, they continue to work on it every chance they get, and experiment with different types of alarms.

Weve tried Metallica and radio talk show, she said, laughing, noting that theyve also recorded students yelling phrases to deter to the wolves.

A fifth-grader at Shaw and first-year robotics team member, Lillian Evans, said she has a lot of background knowledge on the project and that she finds it important to do this for wolves, cattle and ranchers.

Its mostly for the wolves, she said. Id be devastated if wolves died out.

Evans, who said she has been the team spirit throughout the project, works mostly with details related to the project, although she also creates props. Her latest props were wolf ears she made for the team to wear at competitions. She also wears a fur vest and carries a sign that says Save the Wolves.

Were very excited, she said.

Besides finishing their project, the Eagletronics Team will be attending a Spring Showcase in mid-May to compete beside other Southern California student robotics teams in the robotic challenge and core values arenas.

Krista Chandler covers education in Santa Maria for Lee Central Coast News. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @KristasBeat.

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Alice Shaw robotics team building invention to save wolves | Local ... - Lompoc Record

WEISER On Friday, a team of freshmen from Caldwell High School earned the top prize in a regional robotics tournament and a chance to compete in the upcoming state championship.

The tournament, made up of 38 middle school and high school teams, tasked students with designing and building a robot that can compete against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge.

The Caldwell High School senior team won the excellence award for the best overall robot design and student achievement.

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Coach Dennis Zattiero, who teaches pre-engineering at Caldwell High School, said this years victory is in keeping with tradition. He said the school has competed in the world championships three of the last four years.

The thing I find most interesting, is that the teams dont get the pieces to build their robot until the beginning of the school year, Zattiero said.

When they do receive the parts, students often devote up to 200 hours into building the robot, essentially from scratch.

The most unique thing about the competition, Zattiero said, is that students must take the knowledge they have learned in school and apply it to building their robot. The games are what he calls discovery-based learning, which allows students the time they need to work through the issues they face in a real-world setting. The process is difficult, however, and teams are often unable to complete their robot or make it operational.

Once completed, the robot is used to compete in 10 rounds of one-on-one strategy-based tasks. There are three separate tasks teams must complete in the span of two minutes.

The first task teams complete in that time frame is programming their robot to autonomously pick up foam jacks and move them over a fixed wall. The next phase involves putting as many jacks over the wall as possible with an opponent defending the other side with their robot. For the final task, the robot must grab to a certain point on a wooden post and lift itself as high as it can. Many teams dont get to this point due to its difficulty, Zattiero said.

Two minutes doesnt seem like much time, he said. But once the match starts it seems like forever because they have so much to do.

Tournaments are held year-round at the regional, state, and national levels, with local champions going on to compete against the best in the world at VEX World championships in April. The competitions are sponsored by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, a Texas-based organization dedicated to inspiring science and technology learning.

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Freshman Caldwell team takes first place in Regional Robotics Tournament - Idaho Press-Tribune

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SAN FRANCISCO Ford Motor is spending $1 billion to take over a budding robotics startup to acquire more expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021.

The big bet announced Friday comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon Universitys robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander.

The alliance between Argo and Ford is the latest to combine the spunk and dexterity of a technologically savvy startup with the financial muscle and manufacturing knowhow of a major automaker in the race to develop autonomous vehicles. Last year rival General Motors paid $581 million to buy Cruise Automation, a 40-person software company that is testing vehicles in San Francisco.

The Argo deal marks the next step in Fords journey toward building a vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pedal by 2021 a vision that CEO Mark Fields laid out last summer.

The big-ticket deal for the newly-minted company clearly was aimed at getting Salesky and Rander. Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google now known as Waymo and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed to launch Argo late last year.

When talent like that comes up, you dont ignore that ability, said Raj Nair, who doubles as Fords chief technical officer and product development head.

The two will develop the core technology of Fords autonomous vehicle the virtual driver system, which Nair described as the cars brains, eyes, ears and senses.

The decision to turn to Argo for help is a tacit acknowledgement that Ford needed more talent to deliver on Fields 2021 promise, said one expert familiar with Salesky and Rander.

This is likely a realization that Ford is behind relative to companies like GM, Audi, Volvo, Waymo and Uber, and is trying to catch up, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor who leads the schools autonomous vehicle research.

Salesky said Argo expects to have 200 workers by the end of the year. Argo employees will be given stock in the subsidiary as part of their compensation packages so they will be enriched if Argos technology becomes a hot commodity.

The equity should set Argo apart from other companies in recruiting scarce tech workers. Theres a war for talent out there, Fields said.

By joining with Ford, Argo gets strong capital backing and expertise on other components needed to run autonomous cars, as well as product development and manufacturing knowledge, Salesky said. In return for its funding, Argo will design its driverless system exclusively for Ford and then have a chance to license the technology to other automakers in the future.

Competitors such as NVIDIA have developed artificial intelligence that learns about different situations as its tested on roads, something that is almost essential for an autonomous car to function in heavy traffic on city streets.

Ford isnt just racing General Motors and other automakers to gain robotics experience. Uber bought autonomous trucking startup Otto for an estimated $680 million last summer primarily to get Ottos engineers on its team working on driverless vehicles. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, another former Google engineer, is now overseeing Ubers testing of driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona.

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Ford Motor bets $1 billion on robotics startup - Toledo Blade

FAIRMONT Building, planning and plotting, several Marion County students took it to the limit in last weekends 2017 VEX Robotics West Virginia Regional Tournament.

The Marion Comets team, which consists of seven members, is led by Fairmont Senior High School science teacher Ann Burns.

The Marion County robotics teams were made possible by the creation of West Side Robotics in 2009, a nonprofit organization that helps fund teams in the county and promotes an interest in the field.

We were finding that a lot of times with kids who were on LEGO Robotics teams, one of the things was, if you wanted to get sponsorship from other organizations or businesses, sometimes they wanted it to be tax-deductible, West Side Robotics President Cheryl Van Horn said. The reason we became a nonprofit was to provide a way to help fund and support the robotics teams.

The Comets were part of a 23-team field at the Robert H. Mollohan Research Center Feb. 4, all vying for a chance to go to the state tournament.

In VEX competitions, the teams are presented with an engineering challenge game, and they must build and develop robots to accomplish their goal. The teams usually compete directly with each other, trying to score as many points in a given game as possible.

During the regional tournament, two alliances, composed of two teams each, competed against each other to rack up points by scoring different items in each others zones and hanging robots from hanging bars.

Mobility is definitely important in this game, especially defensively, Marion Comets team member and FSHS student Sinead Tobin said. We talked with other teams a little bit. We were considering what would be the highest scoring elements in the game, and we built our robots around that. Originally, we had three groups that put together three robots and we had a small scrimmage. We just combined elements from each one.

The Marion Comets were split in half for the competition, with Team B led by Tobin.

Tobin said that VEX Robotics provides an outlet for middle school and high school students interested in science, technology, engineering and math to put their skills to the test in a fun and competitive way.

It really isnt that common, but theyre trying to bring more STEM activities to the youth because there is such a great need for those jobs, and there will be in the future, Tobin said. (My siblings and I) are all computer geeks, so it kind of runs in the family.

Indeed, promoting interest in STEM fields is a primary goal of the robotics competitions, according to NASA Program Manager Todd Ensign.

West Virginia faces an uncertain economic future if we do not adapt our business sector to focus more on high-technology industries, Ensign said in a previous interview. Our students are currently not adequately prepared to engage in the high-tech job sector and are leaving our state for opportunities elsewhere.

We need to empower our educators to provide the necessary career, STEM and 21st-century skill training to our students in order to counter these trends and entice businesses to our state. The No. 1 concern of employers considering locating or relocating in West Virginia, and in particular this area, is a labor-ready workforce.

While the Marion Comets didnt win the regional competition, theyll have another chance to go to the state competition during another qualifier on Feb. 25 in Charleston.

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Face off: Marion students compete in robotics competition - The Exponent Telegram (press release) (registration)