The Rockwall-Heath High School robotics team recently won the Rock City Regional and the Industrial Design Award in Little Rock, Arkansas. This marks the seventh year in a row, the Black Hawk Robotics team qualified for the First Robotics Competition World Championship.
The team was also honored with the Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors. This award recognizes the robot that best “celebrates form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively addresses the game challenge.”
Over the three-day regional, the team competed with 54 other teams from around the United States and Mexico. After ten qualifying matches, the Black Hawk Robotics team was ranked first. This ranking allowed the team to have the first pick in team alliance selections. After extensive scouting of every team in the competition, the Black Hawks allied with Team 16, Bomb Squad from Mountain Home, AR, and Team 7123, MVE Tin Men from, Mount Vernon, AR.
FIRST is a global organization created to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders through after school robotics programs and competitions. Each year teams design a robot that can complete a specific set of tasks. This year’s game requires a robot to place cubes onto a switch and scale, which allows a team to gain points per second. In addition to this, the robot must have the ability to place cubes into a portal and climb the scale at the end of the match.
The Black Hawks will compete at the World Championships in Houston, Texas April 18-21.
