Poised to enter our second team in the Robonanza exhibition held annually at Greenwich Academy, this year we had eight students who eagerly volunteered to participate in this event. This year’s team included 8th graders Michael, Jesse, Olivia, Erin and Sisso as well as 7th graders Taylor,Paul and Michael. Spending every free minute for the past two weeks, these eight students took eight different challenges and designed robots that would help them accomplish the task presented to them. After completing their building, it was then on to creating a program that would make the robot accomplish the task. Their weeks of preparation paid off.

On February 25th, these eight students trekked down to the suburbs of Greenwich with Mr. Mitchell on a windy Saturday to compete in these eight challenges against over one hundred other competitors; they faced the challenge with determination. These eight challenges consisted of three different “following the line” challenges, a “get out of the box” challenge, a “eight hundred meter race” challenge, a “robo-bowling” challenge, an advanced “steeplechase race” challenge, and a “catapult” challenge. The students worked hard to tweak their programs throughout the day and even reworked building designs of the robots on the fly. It was impressive to witness their persistence to accomplish their goal. They successfully completed all of the challenges with relative ease. They were able to finish in 3rd place in the “robo-bowling” challenge with an impressive score of 64 over five frames and obtained the third longest distance in the catapult challenge with a distance of 163 cm. Well done team!

These students did a fantastic job representing Unquowa and should be proud of how well they did at this competition. We look forward to returning next year and looking to take home one of the coveted Lego trophies.