CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nearly 400 youth from across Illinois will be on the University of Illinois campus Saturday (May 2) to compete in the seventh annual Illinois 4-H Robotics Challenge.
The statewide event is an opportunity for teams of youth enrolled in the 4-H robotics project to design robots to accomplish tasks, demonstrate their knowledge of robot/computer programming, and use teamwork to solve problems in the field.
Participating teams have to build and preprogram at least one robot to bring to the competition, which has a different theme and requires robots to accomplish different tasks each year. The theme for the 2015 challenge is “Sportbot,” and robots will be demonstrating their athletic prowess in Olympic-style sporting events such as weight lifting, 50- and 100-meter sprints, ski jumping, basketball, volleyball, pingpong, gymnastics, archery and figure skating.
Of course, every athlete – even a robot – needs a rooting section, so the competition includes a judging category in which robot contestants earn points for cheering or synchronized cheering.
A new twist for this year’s competition is that teams will be allowed to have multiple robots running simultaneously, testing competitors’ engineering skills, according to Bob Smith, 4-H robotics educator.
“This allows teams to develop skills not found in other robotics events, such as having different devices communicate via Bluetooth,” Smith said.
The robots’ human teammates, who will be enrolled 4-H members between the ages of 8 and 18, will be judged in three areas: performance, technical proficiency and teamwork.
According to Smith, 62 teams have registered to compete in this year’s event, a 50-percent increase from last year. Smith had to recruit additional judges this year to accommodate the additional contestants.
“We’re excited to see that growing numbers of Illinois 4-H youth, especially in underserved areas in our rural and metro communities, are interested in science and technology,“ Smith said. “Half of the new participants are from the Chicago area, and the other half are evenly split between downstate urban regions and rural areas.”
Several advanced 4-H robotics teams will demonstrate more advanced programming techniques used to perform more difficult tasks with robots. Many of these teams recently excelled in the First Tech Challenge and First Robotics Competition events.
In addition, several campus units will give demonstrations on science and technology activities related to their academic programs.
“We value the contribution of the campus to the Illinois 4-H program, knowing that many of the youth exposed to robotics today will choose the U. of I. for their post-secondary education,” Smith said.
The Robotics Challenge, which is free and open to the public as spectators, will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Gym 1 of the Activities and Recreation Center, 201 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign.