All-girls robotics team heads to world championships

CLAYTON — For the second year in a row, the all-girl robotics team from Johnston County has advanced to the FIRST Robotics World Championship.

The global competition will take place April 17-20 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.

At this year’s FIRST N.C. State Championship, G-Force Robotics, based in Clayton, won the Engineering Inspiration Award, which is an automatic qualifier for the world competition. The award recognizes a team for outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school, organization and community.

The young women of G-Force Robotics are on a mission to encourage and inspire other young girls in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. Toward that end, they have designed several programs for elementary, middle and high school girls.

One such program is the “Be That Engineer” literacy project, which works to increase awareness about women in STEM among young readers. The team obtains books about women and girls in STEM, asks female STEM professionals to sign notes of encouragement on the inside covers and then donates the books to elementary schools. When presenting the books to schools, the girls give a robotics demonstration and talk about their team and FIRST Robotics.

To support the literacy program, the team has partnered with nine organizations and companies — Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, OnLogic, Grifols, Collins Aerospace, the U.S. Space Command, the Society for Women Engineers, Northrop Grumman and Discovery Channel’s “BattleBots.” The program has expanded into seven states and overseas.

In addition to community outreach, the team built a 123-pound, industrial-sized robot for the competition season. The robotics competition builds technical skills in computer-aided design, mechanical and electrical engineering and coding. It also builds soft skills in marketing, business, teamwork, critical thinking and public speaking.

FIRST Robotics has 77 teams throughout North Carolina and nearly 3,500 teams spread across 28 countries. The world championship welcomes 600 teams and an audience of 50,000.

At last year’s world championship, G-Force Robotics won the Rookie All-Star Award. This year, the team will compete against 78 others for the Engineering Inspiration Award. It will also compete in two full days of robot matches.

For more information about the team or its “Be That Engineer” literacy project, go to gforcerobotics.com.