Glistening robots designed and put together by area students whirred around an area at Rackspace Hosting Inc. earlier this month in a regional robotics competition involving the area's top 62 teams. <\/p>\n
The wireless machines scurried around the contest arena picking up plastic blocks and depositing them in baskets, grabbing a bar and pulling themselves off the ground and performing other tasks they had been designed to accomplish through months of preparation. <\/p>\n
One San Antonio team that did advance from the Feb. 7-8 area competition has a hidden distinction. <\/p>\n
It's name is the Bronc Botz Nano team. It is listed because of the division it is in and where it does its design and testing work as a Brandeis High School team. But the dozen or so boys and girls who make up the team are actually students at Garcia and Stinson middle schools, two schools that feed into Brandeis. <\/p>\n
This was the first year that Brandeis opened its robotics program up to middle school students, as permitted by the organization that puts on the competition called FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, a Brandeis assistant principal who sponsors the robotics team said. <\/p>\n
It also was the first year that Bronc Botz Nano was in existence. So they had a tremendous season, said Assistant Principal Mike McKenna. <\/p>\n
The team's coach, Gabriel Guerrero, explained some of his members had siblings who had built robots before and others found mentors from other robotic teams. <\/p>\n
What may have set them apart from other teams is that they put in so much practice time close to 10 hours driving their robot in advance of the competition, said Guerrero, whose son Brian is part of the unit's drive team. <\/p>\n
While they can get nervous about competing against older students, they've also gained confidence after beating high school teams at both a qualifying tournament that sent them to the area contest and at the area competition, the coach said. <\/p>\n
They're ecstatic to be moving on, Guerrero said. But the teams from two other North East Independent School District high schools The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, Academy at Lee High School and the Engineering and Technologies Academy at Roosevelt High School and one middle school, Lopez, also failed to qualify for a super regional robotics competition later this month that will set the stage for a world championship put on by an organization called FIRST in April. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
See the original post here:<\/p>\n
Robots doubling as learning tools<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Glistening robots designed and put together by area students whirred around an area at Rackspace Hosting Inc. earlier this month in a regional robotics competition involving the area's top 62 teams. The wireless machines scurried around the contest arena picking up plastic blocks and depositing them in baskets, grabbing a bar and pulling themselves off the ground and performing other tasks they had been designed to accomplish through months of preparation Continue reading