Irving Rambler

October 26, 2006

By Kylie F. Jones and Logan McClenny

On Saturday October 21st, twenty-two middle school and high school teams competed in the Dallas BEST robotics competition at the University of Texas at Dallas in hopes of being one of four teams to go to the Texas BEST regional championship. BEST stands for Boosting Engineering Science and Technology. The title of this year’s competition is Laundry Quandary. Six weeks ago the teams were given a box of parts which would have to turn into a remote-controlled robot that could take bandanas and hang them up on clothes lines and/or take bandanas down off clothes lines and put them in a laundry basket. One of these teams was the TECH Homeschool robotics team based in Irving. TECH completed the task with flying colors. They stayed well in the lead throughout the whole competition and after seven hours and fifty-four rounds TECH took first place for the second year in a row. The other winners were Austin Academy of Garland, The Hockaday School and St, Mark’s School of Texas. The teams were also judged on their project notebook, table display, interviews, overall spirit, sportsmanship, and robot performance. TECH took second place for this part of the competition which is called the BEST Award. And last of all TECH took the Most Robust Award for the robot with the fewest mechanical failures throughout the competition. TECH, Austin Academy, The Hockaday School and St, Mark’s School of Texas will compete in Lubbock for the Texas BEST regional championship on December 2nd. For more information contact techhomeschool@outdrs.net or check out the Texas BEST website at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/texasbest/.

October 19, 2006

By Kylie F. Jones

Do you know about Texas BEST? Texas BEST is a robotics competition for kids in middle school and high school. Over a period of 6 weeks teams must build a robot with only the parts given to them by their local BEST hub. Every year the robot must do something different. Last year was “Mission to Hubble”. This year is the “Laundry Quandary”. I am on an Irving home school team called TECH. For points our robot has to hang “wet” bandanas on a clothes line and take “dry” bandanas off. To do all this it has to have an arm that can reach over five feet, a claw, room to hold “wet” bandanas, a hook that can grab a basket to hold “dry” bandanas, and wheels, all with only four motors. It must weigh less than twenty-four lbs. And it has to be able to fit in to a twenty-four inch cube! On October 21 we will have a competition at the University of Texas at Dallas. The team with the most points wins. If you win you get to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock for the final competition. On October 14 we are going to the Town East Mall to practice with our robot, and see how hard (or easy!) it will be for us to WIN!!! You are invited to come and watch. For more information go to www.dallas-best.org.