This coming October 31st The BEST robotics team will be traveling to Decatur to compete in the annual robotics competition at Calhoun Community College. The team hopes to place as high as they did last year in which they finished 4th place overall. Led by team leaders Alan and Eric Black, they have been working on a robot for this years theme of “Pay Dirt”. For this years theme the robotics team is challenged to construct a robot that will drive through a small course and pick up different game pieces worth varying points.

In order to win this competition they will have to have the most points from the minerals picked up at the end of the game. This too lots of brainstorming and planning to come up with an idea that will fit this course. After many sketches and a CAD model the idea of the robot was complete and just needed to be built.This idea has been under construction as the competition in looming within the next two weeks.

Joseph Kluesner, a student on the robotics team, shared details about this year’s competition. “Well, we gave if different parts for picking up different objects, such as a rotating arm on the bottom to pick up aluminum that is under a board and an arm on a rubber tread that can move the arm from the top to the bottom of the robot. This arm has a claw on it to pick up coal and an air vent, which are both worth quality points.”

Preparing for the competition takes time. Joseph added, “We have been test driving the robot around the classroom and we have also made a mock course inside of the classroom so we will be more familiar with the actual course when we get to the competition.”

It sounds like this year’s robotics team is very excited and well prepared for this competition, so go support them this October 31st.