The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts Robotics team earned recognition in two recent competitions, including the top robot design award at both events.
The team competed in the VEX Robotics Competition held Nov. 6 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The team earned the Design Award for demonstrating the ability to implement the most effective and efficient robot design process.
VEX Robotics Competitions is more akin to a sports competition rather than grounded in real world problems, said Nicholas Seward, an ASMSA computer science instructor who serves as the team’s coach. Teams in VEX competitions build robots using off-the-shelf components students can bolt together with no power tools and minimal fabrication, he said.
The team will compete in other VEX Robotics competitions this school year, and it also qualified for the state tournament to be held March 12, 2022.
A week later, the team competed in the BEST Robotics competition held Nov. 13 at UALR. The team won three first place awards, including first place overall, and one second place award at the competition. The BEST Robotics robot had to be built within a period of eight weeks and be designed to complete certain tasks during the competition.
In addition to first place overall, ASMSA won first place for Critical Design Review and Marketing and second place for Notebook in the BEST competition. Seward said the team used a large number of laser-cut pieces that mad the robot “look like it could have come from IKEA.”
“This year the team chose to take on all aspects of the competition and excelled in all of them as evidenced by the awards,” Seward said about the BEST competition. “ASMSA’s makerspace has a new laser cutter which has allowed students to more rapidly prototype and experiment.”
Members of the team included Charlotte Boehme, Robert Boerwinkle, Gavin Chen, Nasya Choy, Trey Clark, Joseph Cowell, Mason Duren, Raymond Moore, Kaleb O’Connor, Winnie Smith, Aiden Thacker and Vicky Zhu.
Clark said “coming up with game-day solutions to the robot problems were exhilarating. The way the team worked together was amazing. We were happy with the robot performance. We were surprised by a few mechanical shortcomings such as gears chewing. Overall it was an amazing experience.”
The team will compete at the BEST of Texas, the regional competition, on Dec. 4.