Middle and high school students from 17 area schools are set to compete this weekend in a robotics competition at NDSU.
The NDSU College of Engineering is scheduled to host the Bison BEST Robotics Competition Friday, Oct. 30, and Saturday, Oct. 31, at Bentson-Bunker Fieldhouse. This is the ninth year NDSU has hosted the event.
BEST, which stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology, offers hands-on, real-world, engineering-based experience to middle and high school students. The mission of BEST Robotics is to inspire students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM, through participation in a sports-like science and engineering-based robotics competition.
Six weeks ago, each school received an identical kit of equipment and parts and a set of game rules. Their challenge is to design and build a prototype robot to repair and operate an underground mine, which is represented by a playing field. Each quadrant of the field contains game pieces representing a variety of mine materials. Success will be determined by net profit of the commodities collected.
A live stream of the event will be available at www.clrobotics.com.
Each team has designed and built their robot, and will try to outperform other teams’ robots. The event consists of two parallel competitions. The first is a robotics game in which four teams compete at once in a series of three-minute matches. The robotics portion of the competition takes place on Saturday.
The other competition is for the BEST Award, which includes the delivery of a marketing presentation, design of a team exhibit and a spirit and sportsmanship component. The majority of the BEST Award categories are judged on Friday.
Engineers and other technical professionals from local industries served as mentors for the teams.
NDSU, for the fourth year, also is scheduled to host the Northern Plains BEST Robotics regional championship Dec. 3-5. It is one of four regional championship event sites in the country and will feature the 36 top teams from seven BEST Robotics competition hub events in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
For more information about the competition, contact Holly Erickson at 701-231-7697 or holly.erickson@ndsu.edu or visit www.ndsu.edu/coe/k_12_outreach/stem_competitions/best_robotics/.
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Oct. 28, 2015
