Robotics - Mall Date: Mid-October & Competition Date: End of October
HEAT’s robotics club (Maniacs Attempting Robot Science) offers students from 6th through 12th grade an opportunity to compete in the national science and engineering competition sponsored by BEST, Inc (www.bestinc.org). Each fall, BEST challenges the students to build a remote controlled robot which can complete a specific mission in a limited time in an exciting, sports-style tournament. Students develop teamwork, creativity, sportsmanship and problem-solving skills as they learn about technology and the engineering process. The club is busy from August through October, with little activity the rest of the year.
It's that time of year again:
to brainstorm, design, strategize, build, and program (and then tweak the design, strategy, and build/programming) of a robot! Here is the teaser video for this year's competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRRnjETXOFc. The theme this year is "BUGS."
Who can participate? Any student from 6th - 12th grade. We want as many who are interested in any aspect of the competition to join the team! Even if your child doesn't love robots, the team definitely has an area that will fit with their talents and skills. We need team members to share the task!
What will the students do? It depends upon the student's time commitment and interests. The thing I love best about BEST is that it is cross curricular like the real world. Students on the team write an MLA research paper and many other papers to document what the team does over the 6-week period. Some members are in charge of PR/media, and other members take photos and videos of the team's work. The team builds a website, designs t-shirts to wear for the competition, and gives an oral presentation about their robot and team to judges at the game day competition. The team builds a display (similar to a sales booth in an expo only with no sales) to showcase their team, robot, and work. There is even a need for cheering!
All that, and we haven't even gotten to the part about robots! At the kick-off event on September 17th, the students are given a game-style situation (or task) for their robot to complete and are sent a lot of robot parts. For the game's task, sometimes it includes robots competing in the same game field; at other times, the robots have separate game fields. Each team has to design a robot that will fit their team's strategy for the current year's competition. Some of the students learn C and/or Easy C to program the robot. The controller used is a gaming style of controller. Some students get to drive the robot on game day, others help with the oral presentation, some run the display booth, everyone cheers, and some do multiple jobs on game day.
What is the schedule? This is the competition schedule: http://www.ntbest.org/schedule.htm, but there will be many hours devoted to the 6-week project. There are a number of different "hubs" (or regional level competitions) that compete, and a couple of teams from each hub can move on to compete at the state level competition. Those who actually help drive the robot will be busy, but it is only for short time! Unless the team advances to the state level of competition, the season is over on October 29th.
For more information about the competition, please check the BEST website: http://www.bestinc.org/ and our hub's website: http://www.ntbest.org/. I will invite you to the robotics team's website if you are interested.
Thanks!
Julie
