Sanford Middle School to send three teams to VEX Robotics World Championship – Opelika Auburn News

Sanford Middle Schools robotics program will have three teams competing against 1,400 schools at the VEX Robotics World Championship beginning Wednesday in Kentucky after winning by a tiebreaker at the state competition.

This will be the first world championship competition for the program, which started this year, according to Robert Harlan, coach of the robotics program and a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Sanford Middle School.

Im extremely excited for them, Harlan said. Theyve got a lot of drive and a lot of passion as far as coming for two and half hours, just about most of them are here every day.

Harlan is not new to competing in robotics competitions. He took teams from another school the last three years in a row.

After taking on a teaching position at Sanford Middle School, the principal asked him to start a robotics program.

The after-school program is made up of fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders.

The students, who had no prior experience with robots, were able to have two teams place first for the state in the elementary division and one team place second for the state in the middle school division. There also was a team that placed fifth for the state in the elementary division.

At the world championship, the school will have two teams competing in the elementary division and one team in the middle school division.

There are four students per team. In each individual match, two kids compete and rotate throughout the competition.

The world championship will have teams from 40 different nations competing over a two-day period.

Harlan said the chief opponents his teams are focusing on are from New Zealand, Canada and Hawaii.

To prepare for the competition, Harlans teams will look at game films for other teams.

We practice and design the robots based on those ideas, Harlan said.

Competition always changing

The VEX IQ challenge for the competition changes every year.

This year, the object of the challenge is to attain the highest score by scoring orange and blue hexballs in their colored scoring zone and goals, and by parking and balancing robots on the bridge.

The robot has to get the orange balls started on the blue side, and they have to take the balls from the blue side of the field, and they will bring them to the orange side of the field to score points and then do the opposite with the blue balls, Harlan said.

Teams can score 1 to 5 points depending on where the robots are located.

The teams in the world championship also have to have written communication skills that involve keeping an engineering notebook that documents the robot designs each team has done throughout the year.

Its not just building and driving robots, Harlan said. They have to brainstorm, build, test, refine and just keep doing that throughout the year.

Harlan explained how robotics education is beneficial to students.

It fits in with the STEM initiative, Harlan said. Were a more technologically advanced society nowadays. I want the kids to be exposed to more opportunities in STEM-related fields because that is the future.

Seventh-grader Hunter Perkinson wants to go into a career in robotics or engineering.

Its very needed in the real world today, Harlan said. A lot of people are using it more.

Harlan welcomes any girls who want to participate in the schools robotics program.

I actively encourage girl participation because women are underrepresented in the STEM fields, Harlan said.

See original here:

Sanford Middle School to send three teams to VEX Robotics World Championship - Opelika Auburn News