[Leica] State Robotics Competition

[Aram]

A new event here in Yakima.  Schools in Washington and some in Oregon were competing for the state title of robotics champions.  I do not fully understand the rules, but they would race their robots around trying to pick up yellow cubes, elevate them, and place them on a large balance.  The team who stacked the most weight I take it would win, but there was another thing going on with placing the cubes on a chamber on the ground.  It was interesting and the kids were having a blast.  Of course, there were winners and looses, cheers and tears.  Kind of the Olympics for nerds and geeks.  And I was glad to see that females were highly represented.  I spend a lot of my career as a teacher trying to get girls to pursue careers in science.  From the number of doctors and doctorates from my students, I would say I was a partial success.

So, here is the action.  These things are pretty big and very complex.  Probably pretty expensive.  It was good to see small schools, like Tekoa, WA, with a population smaller than the enrollment in many of the other school.  Yet they were competing with the best of them.

Hoisting their yellow cube to the balance:
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Aram/w78/rc/State+Robot+Comp-7273.jpg.html

And the rest follow.  View them large if you can.

Comments welcome.

Aram

Aram Langhans
(Semi) Retired Science Teacher
& Unemployed photographer

“The Human Genome Project has proved Darwin more right than Darwin himself would ever have dared dream.” James D. Watson