ROBOTS! For some of us, the word may awaken memories of Rosie the Robot Maid, a character from The Jetsons cartoon, or of the autobots of the Transformer movies. Our middle school robotics teams learned about real robots! They were busy during the school year constructing two actual robots that are remotely controlled and capable of competing with other robots built by students from other middle schools.
The 2025-26 school year was our first year for our robotics team, led by Joe and Kendra Prine. The robotics team was actually comprised of two teams: The Techno Titans led by Captain Morgan Prine and The Bleep Bloops led by Captain Lincoln Cumberledge.
The teams constructed two robots. The goal was to prepare the robots to compete in the West Virginia VIQRC State Championship, coordinated by the WV Robotics Alliance. Competition between robotics teams takes place on a 12×12’ “field”. The robots, remotely controlled by team members, work to manipulate 6-inch plastic balls to score in a variety of ways, one of which is to get your own team’s ball onto an elevated platform. Robots can push the competitor robots’ ball off the platform so that they don’t score. Teams can earn bonus points by passing the ball between their own team’s two robots. Each team is required to submit an engineering notebook which will be judged on their understanding of the engineering design process.
Because of an unusual number of snow days, our teams were unable to complete their robots in time for competition, but early one morning of spring break, the team traveled to Fairmont, WV to observe other schools competing. Team members watched closely at what did and did not work for the competing robots and enthusiastically took notes in anticipation of improving their own robots next year.
The robotics teams celebrated their final meeting of the school year with a pizza party and special mathematics-themed cupcakes. We can’t wait to see what our teams construct next year!
