COLLEEN MCCARTHY
Middle and high school students from all over the state are preparing for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) Robotics competition to be held at Starkville High School this weekend.
BEST Robotics aims to inspire an interest in science, engineering and technology in young students. Mississippi State University’s Bagley College of Engineering is a sponsor of the event.
Starkville will be represented by three different teams — Starkville High School Millsaps Career and Technology Center’s BEST Robotics Club, Starkville Christian School’s SCS CougarBots and the Starkville Christian Home Educators’s SCHE Eclipse Robotics Spectre.
Several weeks ago, the teams gathered in Starkville to receive their challenge. This year’s theme is “Bugs,” and the teams are charged with using their robots to collect genetically engineered insects that have escaped from a lab. The robots will have to be able to maneuver through an obstacle course to collect termites, flies and cockroaches — not real ones of course, but rather bags filled with pinto beans, suspended styrofoam balls and small battery-operated toys that will be in constant motion. Several teams will be on the course at the same time.
“I would say that this one is going to be harder than the last few, but none of them are alike, so that’s to be expected,” Starkville Christian team member Caleb Jordan said.
The teams had just a few weeks to design, build and test their robots. They also have to build a display booth, create a full technical notebook to track their progress, write a full research paper on the topic and design a marketing campaign that will sell their robot. Besides the performance and technical aspects, the teams will also be judged on their team spirit and creativity.
“Generally, it involves a lot of surprises at the beginning of the competition, a lot of last minute changes, too,” Veronica Leach, who is on the SCHE team, said. “It can be pretty stressful at times, but it’s always a lot of fun.”
The SCHE team has designed a simple computer game based on the genetically engineered bug theme, created a scrapbook filled with pictures of the design and building process and made a website that updates members, family and friends on their progress.
Each team usually splits up into a number of smaller teams to work on different aspects of the project: a robot construction team, a spirit team, a booth design team and a notebook team, to name a few. Even students who may not have a specific interest in engineering can find a place on the team.
Read the complete article at Starkville Daily News.
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