Two area teams head to Texas for national robotics competition

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — Two area teams are excited to say that they will be headed to Texas this week to compete in the National Robotics Championship after winning state titles.

Snider took home the Rookie of the Year award at the FIRST Indiana Robotics competition. Their robot, 9431, will head to the FIRST World Championship in Houston, where it will compete against 600 other teams.

Alongside Snider, Huntington County’s 4-H Robotics team will also be heading to Houston after winning their first state championship since their start 20 years ago. Huntington worked off the musical theme of this year’s competition to create their robot ‘Thunderstruck.’

“This team has a lot of talented kids who are able to learn while also using their personal skills to build a robot that can perform well in all different functions,” said Trevor Meyers, lead software student with Huntington’s Robotics Team. “We are all learning something in the shop every single day, which is awesome even for the mentors.

According to FIRST’s website, this year’s competition, titled CRESCENDO, asked teams to use their STEM skills to build and program a 125-pound robot to compete on a basketball court-sized field in a game. The music-themed game, asks students to collect “notes” and place them in different locations on the court and finish by climbing a chain onto the “stage.”

“This is our first year, none of us came into this with any previous knowledge of robotics,” said Jayden Manz, a student with the Snider Robotics Team. “This shows the evolution of our team and the evolution of our robot as well. Showing how we came from a background of no robotics and now we’re going to the national championship.”

Wish both teams good luck as they head off to the competition going Wednesday, April 17 through Saturday, April 20.