HANCEVILLE — Building on the success of its annual “drone wars” competition, which pits Cullman County Schools’ 7th graders against each other as they maneuver remote-controlled drones through an obstacle ridden race course, the district has introduced a new STEAM focused competition to its high school students.
On Friday, Feb. 2, teams from each of the district’s seven high schools and the the Cullman Area Technology Academy competed both with and against each other in the inaugural Cullman County Robotics Competition held at Wallace State Community College.
The VEX Robotics Competition “Over/Under” game was played on a 12’ x 12’ field with two netted goals on either side separated by a two-inch PVC barrier. Instead of competing individually, each school was randomly assigned to either a red or a blue two-team alliance. The goal of the game was for each alliance to place as many acorn-shaped “triballs” into their goal during the one minute and forty-five second play period.
Wallace State Computer Science Program Chair Terry Ayers said teams are reassigned at the top of each round during tournament play, which gives the competition an additional element of surprise that students should account for when designing and programming their robots.
”It’s really all about developing a strategy around what your limitations are and what the game manual will allow,” he said.
Ayers said he first became involved with the VEX program nearly eight years ago when his son was involved with the Holly Pond High School robotics team. Since then he has seen how these types of events have increased student interest in STEM curriculum. He said kids are naturally competitive and taking the principals of math and science out of textbooks and placing them in a students hands has proved to be a good motivator.
”If you tell a student that you are going to talk about math or science, they immediately start shutting down. However, if you say that you’ve got a box of parts and that you’re going to build a robot and go to a competition in three weeks, they start doing a deep dive into that pretty quick. They don’t really realize what they are doing is really supporting science, math, engineering and really the whole STEM process. It’s not like a Jedi mind trick or something, but it kind of is,” Ayers said.
Cold Springs STEM teacher Karen McReath said this had certainly been true for her students. She said the further her team got into developing their robot, the more their interest in robotics and engineering increased. Without any formal robotics experience herself, McReath said she arranged visits to local manufacturing facilities so that the teenagers could see the real-world applications of the principals they had been applying in their build.
Cold Springs team member Malaya Taylor, said she was initially intimidated by the idea of building a robot from scratch, but was surprised by how intuitive the process actually was. “I”m a visual learner, so by actually watching it happen as my team and I practiced, it was a lot easier to pick up on than you might think,” she said.
Taylor’s career goal has been to enter the medical field and become an anesthesiologist after graduation. During a lull in the competition she said she wasn’t fully prepared to commit to a career in engineering, but was much more interested in exploring careers which could bring together her long-held passion for medicine and her newfound interest in robotics.
The following awards were given at the conclusion of the competition:
Combined Team Tournament Champions — West Point and Good HopePerseverance Award — Holly PondSkills Award — West PointExcellence Award — Fairview