Norman — The girls botball team at Whittier Middle School placed fourth in the Oklahoma Regional Botball Competition March 6 and also was recognized with The KISS Trophy for simple and innovative approach to programming.
The Norman Advanced Botball team placed fifth and received the Judges Choice Trophy for outstanding engineering and programming.
This year’s competition required the robots to identify oil-covered rubber ducks and take them to a cleaning area on the game board. The clean ducks were then lined up, tagged and set free. The robots also had to relocate frogs to an area representing the wet lands on the board.
The robots are designed to maneuver on a game board without a remote control.
After seeding rounds, where the teams competed unopposed on the game board to accumulate points, the teams went head-to-head in double elimination rounds. Here, the robots tried to score as many points as possible, while preventing the opposing robot from scoring.
The Oklahoma based International Botball Educational Robotics Program is designed for junior high and high school students and strengthens their math, science and writing skills through designing, programming, building and documenting the robots.
Other awards to local teams included most environmentally friendly won by Alcott Middle School; most promising design won by Dimensions Academy; outstanding design process to the Whittier Middle School girls’ team and Norman Advanced Robotics; outstanding rookie team to Central Elementary School, Moore; best recovery to the Whittier Middle School boys’ team; and the sportsmanship award to Fairview Elementary School, Moore.
The first National Robotics Week is April 10-18 and will focus on the role robots play in improving life and the importance of robots in jobs and the future.
