The Rolla Regional Robotics team from St. James, Mo., captured its third consecutive championship at the 2018 annual Greater St. Louis Botball Tournament on Saturday, April 8 at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Fourteen teams competed in the Morris University Center’s Meridian Ballroom before a crowd of more than 200 throughout the day.
The Greenville Comets were runners-up, while Ada Lovelace of Wabash Valley placed third. Points are accumulated through three rounds including documentation, seeding and double-elimination competition.
The theme of this year’s tournament was agriculture in the Coachella Valley, out west. The overall tasks were focused on the concepts of using robotics to improve agriculture and tourism in the region. One task was to water date palms by bringing water in from aquifers. Dates also were harvested and sorted in preparation for sale.
Members of SIUE’s Autonomous Robotics Club (ARC) student organization volunteered their time to help.
“the Botball program is all about complex problem solving,” said Gary Mayer, PhD, associate professor of computer science in the SIUE School of Engineering, and regional event organizer. “We want to develop critical thinking skills that can be applied for success in many aspects of their lives. The Botball mentorship model focuses on the students creating and implementing solutions to the presented problems.”
Per the organization’s website, the Botball curriculum is aligned with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
The teams received a kit with hundreds of parts such as sensors, motors and structural pieces. Students are free to be as inventive with the kit components as possible. The game board is set on an 8’ x 8’ table, with various PVC and material components, and additionally this year, there was a tram across the game board that teams could use. The result was a fleet of unique robots that allowed the students to see the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, especially in head-to-head competition.
Botball is coordinated through the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics. The tournament event pits teams against one another in two-minute rounds. A team’s student-created robot must demonstrate its ability to perform a number of tasks worth varying points.
Photo: Upper Right (L-R) - Jackson Budwell and Alex Wernex from Edwardsville High School.Lower Right - Jamaine Owens of East St. Louis Charter High School.