The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and Arts BEST Robotics team won several awards in the recent Little Rock BEST competition at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on Nov. 5.
The ASMSA team won second place for robot performance, third place in the notebook competition and won the Founders Award for the most unique robotics hardware design. They qualified for the Frontier Trails BEST Regional contest in Fort Smith on Dec. 3.
Nick Seward, an ASMSA computer science instructor and adviser for the team, said the robot—called T-Rex—uses a unique design that he hasn’t seen executed in a BEST competition before. BEST stand for Boosting Engineering Science and Technology. He said the team used a double four-bar linkage for the design.
“This is by far the BEST robot we have ever built,” Seward said, adding the pun was intentional. “It is fairly fun and easy to drive. They have a series of easy modifications to make it even better before we go on to regionals.”
The team had the highest semifinal round score at the competition, but the scores are reset for the final. The team’s score was limited when a wheel fell off the robot during a round, but the team still managed to finish second, he said.