Photos by Angi Agle
By Angi Agle and University of Tennessee
With the first day of competition complete, the Secret City Wildbots are ranked Number 9 in the Smoky Mountain Regionals competition held at the Knoxville Convention Center. Continuing competition Saturday morning will determine final standings for the elimination rounds Saturday afternoon.
Team selection for the elimination rounds are based partly on standing (the top eight teams are automatically entered and choose two other schools for their teammates), but partly on individual capabilities and other factors.
At the end of the elimination rounds, the winning team of three robots earns the right to enter the World Championship in St. Louis, Missouri, from April 22-25.
The theme of this year’s game is “Recycle Rush.” Robots are to pick up recycle bins, put foam noodles in trash cans, and stack all of them in the center of the field. Additional points are gained for the number of containers stacked.
Human players feed foam noodles into the trash cans as the robots hold them up to a hole in the plexiglas, as well as feeding gray recycle bins into the field for the robots to stack.
It’s the fifth annual FIRST Robotics Competition Smoky Mountain Regional, sponsored in part by the University of Tennessee’s College of Engineering.
The event is being held held April 2-4. It’s bringing 50-55 high school teams to town, with 15 teams from the Knoxville area welcoming students from 10 states as far away as West Virginia and Ohio.
Goals of the competition include teaching teamwork to students and encouraging them to get interested in science and technology.
See previous story here.
See an information page here.
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