Robot uprising: Collin County students test their metal at annual robotics competition

Celina's most industrious minds were hard at work Saturday when the Collin County branch of Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (CoCo BEST) – an organization devoted to promoting science and engineering in schools – held its annual robotics competition at Ereckson Middle School in Allen.

This year's event, Warp XX, featured 24 teams from area middle and high schools that constructed robots designed to climb and carry objects up a 10-foot pole meant to represent the “space elevators” scientists think will one day facilitate travel through the atmosphere.

“Space elevators are all the rage right now because it's a way to get into space without needing to launch rockets,” said Garry Ackerman, who co-directs CoCo Best along with his wife, Janne. “The premise of the game was everyone is running a company that's responded to a DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] proposal, and that everyone is supposed to build a robot and demonstrate that it can climb the pole to outer space.”

Ereckson, the host school, finished first overall to extend a nine-year success story during which it has qualified for state eight times and made a trip to a national competition at Disney World. The 31-student team is headed by Graham Gadd, the head of the Ereckson science department, and Kelvin Moore, an engineer at Raytheon Company.

The rest of the top four teams, in descending order, included SAIL Homeschoolers, Gunter High School and Celina Middle School, which finished fourth overall and fourth in the robotics competition with their robot Rocket Cat. Tom Bean High School won the game portion of the competition.

The 34-member Celina team operated under the name Botcat, Inc. and had a corporate structure with a president, Alexa Cilia; vice president, Samuel Snyder; and several heads of departments. The team was made up of members of the school's gifted and technology class and its robotics club, with teachers Kaye Jones and Lisa Smith providing guidance.

The Celina team competed in last year's CoCo BEST contest and carried over the same structure and many of the same members from that effort. They established a new division within their company – called S.E.E. (Space Elevator Exploration) – to keep the narrative running.

“It presents them with a real-world experience,” Jones said. “Building the robot and marketing it and working as a team to accomplish all that is what it's like in the real world and in the industry. So, it was a good introduction to that for them.”

McKinney High School and McKinney Boyd also took part in the event.

Raytheon, which has a branch in McKinney, is a primary supporter of CoCo Best. Garry and Janne Ackerman work there as an innovation advocate and program director, respectively, and they've been integral in recruiting co-workers to help out with the program. The goal is to pair each team with an industry mentor, most of whom come from Raytheon.

Participating teams were provided with a list of allowable materials and a construction kit prior to the event free of charge and were given six weeks to build their robots. How their creations faired during the game portion of the contest was just one of five criteria used to score their performance. The remaining categories included spirit and sportsmanship, the presentation of a project engineering notebook that detailed their design process, a marketing pitch and a team exhibit and interviews.

“The marketing part had eight students go into a room with judges from Raytheon and basically try to sell their robot,” Gadd said. He added that his team is tweaking a few elements of its robot before the next round of competition to make it lighter and replace its pulleys with gears.

CoCo Best is a hub of BEST Robotics Incorporated, an organization started in Sherman in 1993 by Texas Instruments engineers Ted Mahler and Steve Marum as a way to bring teaching methods used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the high school level. The first BEST competition included 14 schools and 221 students from North Texas, but the annual event is now held in 23 states and one province in Canada.

The winners from Saturday's competition will advance to the Texas BEST Regional Robotics Competition, which will include top teams from Texas and New Mexico and is set to take place Friday and Saturday, Nov. 9-10 at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland. The University of Texas at Dallas will host the competition.

“This whole program helps our students,” Gadd said. “On our board display, we have a whole entire section called generations that shows students that have come through the program. I've had several students come through that are now in engineering.”

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