Saturday, Pace High School, Avalon Middle School, Sims Middle School, and Woodlawn Beach Middle School competed in the University of West Florida’s eighth annual Emerald Coast BEST robotics competition alongside 10 other schools. Woodlawn along with Pensacola’s Brown-Barge Middle School will compete in December’s regional competition at Auburn University. According to Megan Gonzalez, director of communications for UWF, the theme for this year’s event was “Blade Runner 2014.” She said, “Students used teamwork and innovative thinking to execute five sets of tasks to assemble and position a wind turbine into a completed state. Each team was evaluated on the robot’s performance, marketing presentation, team exhibit and interviews, project engineering notebook and spirit and sportsmanship.”
Before the competition, Kevin Teague, an eighth grade student from Avalon Middle School, said he wanted to be a doctor but now is interested in software engineering. “This completely changed my mind,” he said.
Teague said he had a hand in building the robot, making the display, presentation, and the engineering notebook documenting the process. As the lead programmer, Teague said he had to learn Simulink, simulation and model-based software to program the robot. Teague said his video game experience helped in this.
The team’s robot needed to be able to push levers on a gate, carry items a distance, and move half-foot tall PVC cylinders called “chickens,” Teague said. According to the competition pamphlet, the chickens represented federally mandated requirements to relocate endangered species when constructing wind farms. The competition, Teague said, tries to teach cooperation, and learning science, robotics, and building skills, as well as the social skills needed for the project presentation.
Teague said it was his first year at the competition. With the Sims Middle School band, Seaside Neighborhood School cheerleaders, and the Woodham Middle School shark mascot, the competition had the energy of a football game. “I thought it was going to be just a bunch of guys playing with robots. I never expected this.”
According to Gonzalez, The Emerald Coast BEST hub is the only one in Florida. The hub, she said, is funded completely by corporate and individual sponsorships, which provide each team with a material kit to build the robots. No fees are paid by students or schools that participate in the BEST robotics competitions.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Santa Rosa County schools compete in robotics competition