 CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COMKelson Lau, of Waiakea High on the Big Island, yesterday prepared his robot for the botball tournament that starts today at the Hawaii Convention Center. The competition is free and open to the public. CLICK FOR LARGE |
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Robot-minded students show off their creations
Youths from around the globe face off in a tournament testing their high-tech skills
Middle and high school students from around the world are gathering today in a test of ingenuity to see who has engineered the best task-programmed robot.
There are nearly 500 participants in this year's National Conference on Educational Robotics' International Botball and Beyond Botball tournaments, which begin today at the Hawaii Convention Center in Exhibit Hall 1.
The competition, in its sixth year, is free and open to the public and runs through Friday.
"We built (the robots) in one day," said Leanne King, a Waiakea High School sophomore.
The Big Island team placed second overall in the Hawaii Botball Regional Tournament in April. The team spent yesterday giving their robots a test run and sizing up their competition.
"If everything works, there is no way the other teams can win," said team captain Jordan Olive, who started working with robotics in eighth grade. "From watching the other robots, we have a good chance."
His dad, Waiakea science teacher Dale Olive, coaches the team.
There are 65 teams competing, including 20 from Hawaii, 44 from the mainland and one from Poland, in the International Botball tournament.
 CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COMCompetitors waited to do practice runs yesterday. CLICK FOR LARGE
TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
The botball tournaments are held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Exhibit Hall 1. They are free and open to the public. There are more than 75 teams competing from Hawaii, the mainland, Poland and Japan.
» Today: 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., Beyond Botball and International Botball seeding rounds
» Tomorrow: 3 to 5:30 p.m., Beyond Botball double elimination rounds
» Friday: 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., International Botball double elimination rounds; award ceremony to follow |
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The second tournament, Beyond Botball, is for high school graduates and has attracted 11 teams from across the country and Japan.
"This is the largest event that we ever put on," said Jenny Grigsby, public outreach coordinator for KISS Institute for Practical Robotics. "There are usually only four tables, but there's six this year."
The International Botball tournament was open to middle and high school student robot teams that competed this year in a regional botball tournament.
The task for the teams includes a Hawaiian theme, according to organizers.
The 90-second game is played on 4-by-8-foot table, and robots must prepare the area for the impending destruction of a volcano. The robots are programmed by students to pick up colored pompoms that represent pineapples and compost leaves, and place them into bins. They must also place rooftops on houses and clear away "lava."
"The robots have to start, run the game, and stop all by themselves," Grigsby said. "The students are not allowed to touch them."
During seeding rounds today, each team has a turn to see how many points they can score in 90 seconds. In the double elimination rounds tomorrow and Friday, two teams challenge each other and the team with the most points continues to the next round.
According to Grigsby, Norman High School from Oklahoma has won the tournament for the last two years.
The conference will also host several guest speakers, including NASA's David Lavery, founder and director of the Robotics Alliance Project. Gov. Linda Lingle attended the event last night.
"The response we got here is amazing," Grigsby said. "We will definitely be back."
