In a first for Huntsville, New Century High School hosted the Alabama State FTC Robotics Championship on Saturday. More than 25 robotics teams were on hand to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format.
Scott Agnew, a teacher at New Century High School and coach of Redstone Robotics, said the FIRST Tech Challenge encourages students learn and work together.
“This is hands on science, this is where our kids are going to go in the future to be part of our industry.”
Agnew said this is an overall win for everyone participating.
“Doing any robotics teaches you all robotics. This is STEM in a nutshell.”
The competing teams are challenged to design and build a robot using a kit of parts to compete against each other in sophisticated field game. The robot must run for three minutes and has specific tasks to do. Agnew says teams don’t know the task beforehand, and compared it to a “big tic tac toe game” of moving cones across the field in a line.
Redstone Robotics team captain, 18-years-old Grace Little, was confident their robot was well equipped for the competition.
“You’ll see everyone working together to get things done quickly because it’s a fast-paced competition,” said Little. “So it’s really good because you get a lot of team work skills. And you’re learning about machine learning and things you’ll be doing in real life so it applies to the real world a lot.”
Younger students were also on hand to showcase their work.
11-year-old Ellie Whited with the Blue Bananas is part of First Lego League. The group of 5th, 6th, and 7th graders built their own Lego robot as part of an innovation project.
“We can help impact the world with our solution,” she said.
The Blue Bananas have built a “Power in a Box”, which Whited said helps rural Africa with their power needs.
“It contains two flexible solar panels, one bladeless turbine and a rechargeable battery and power outlets,” said Whited.
Another local First Lego League group, the Gear Girls, also built a robot, this one to address energy efficiency. 10-year-old Sonia Singhal said working with an energy theme this year, the Gear Girls wanted to figure out ways to help people turn off their lights.
“Because people waste so much energy by not turning off their lights.”
Singhal says she enjoys working with robotics to tackle real world challenges.
“It’s fun to go to the competitions and see the other teams and what they did and we learn a lot from doing that,” Singhal said.
“And doing it with our team and with our friends is really fun too.”
The FTC Robotics Championship at New Century High School stretched nearly nine hours from opening ceremonies to the awards presentation. New Century High School’s Redstone Robotics won a second place Innovate Award but will not be advancing to the Worlds in Houston after a computer glitch the hindered the team in the first matches. The two teams advancing to the Worlds are Root Negative One from Arkansas and Iterative Intentions from Texas.
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