MARIANNA, Fla. - Three Marianna High School students now have bragging rights after competing against students statewide for a robotics competition.

High school seniors Erika Pereda, Joshua Peacock, and Daniel Tillman won first place for animatronics during this year's Technology Student Association Conference in Orlando.

Animatronics is making robotic devices come to life.

Some examples include the robots at Chuck E. Cheese's, Universal Studios, and Walt Disney World.

The group chose to create an animatronic alligator.

"The goal is to actually present it into a children's museum, and our goal is to educate children through science and technology," said Pereda.

Some parts of the gator were real, including the head and the claws.

The robotic gator is running on six motors and a hydraulic system.

Key features include movement, and an IPhone connected to a Bluetooth controlled speaker for audio.

"The hardest thing we had to do was the talking of the mouth, the talking with the alligator moving its jaws up and down.. synchronize that to the sound to the alligator...But Josh did an awesome job with doing that," said Daniel Tillman.

Joshua Peacock also helped program the gator's eyes to change color.

"You give it like a number value for a color, so it's like 0 to 255, like a red, a green, and a blue value," said Peacock.

Project Lead the Way Pre-Engineering teacher Vicki Garrett is proud of her students.

"It's amazing what they can do with that, and it's such a big thing especially for entertainment purposes. The movie industry uses animatronics all the time," said Garrett.

The group will move on to compete nationally in Orlando this June.

The students will share the robot with elementary school students some time next week.

Read the rest here:

Marianna High School Students Win State Robotics Competition - My Panhandle