MOUNT VERNON – Mount Vernon hosted a different type of high school and middle school competition on Jan. 15. It was a contest to see who could design, build and code the best robot.
Eighteen Ohio teams competed at Energy Fieldhouse, a school system news release reported.
This year’s competition was called “Change Up” and was on a a 12-foot-by-12-foot square field.
“The object of the game is to attain a higher score than their opponents by placing balls in goals and connecting rows,” the news release said. “Teams also compete in a skills competition, where they independently have one minute for a driver control and one minute for an autonomous where they can score as many points as possible.”
The event was closed to spectators due to COVID-19 regulations.
Winners went on another round of competition in Licking on Jan. 30. Two Mount Vernon Middle School robots made it into the round of 16 out of 60 teams, a Facebook post reported.
“In skills rankings, two bots tied for the top-20 spot out of all middle school teams in Ohio!” the post stated.
In addition to the robot competition, industry experts graded students’ engineering notebooks. Field experts interviewed students and awarded those with the best notebooks and interviews, the news release said.
The annual competition was sponsored by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, which works to connect students and schools to a variety of technology-based programs.
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