Stellar fares well at regionals

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FIRST Robotics Competition Team 5413, Stellar Robotics, competed in the Queen City Regional competition March 31 through April 2 in Cincinnati. The high school team ranked fourth out of 56 teams.

“Stellar continues to perform consistently well in all their competitions. We are very proud of this team,” said Chantal DeYoe, Team Facilitator.

Not only did the team perform well on the field, the students also interviewed well in judged categories throughout the weekend. Judges for the Chairman’s Award, which is the highest award given by FIRST, told the team that they ranked in the top five at this event for this very competitive award.

And the team walked away with the Excellence in Engineering Award, sponsored by Delphi. This is the highest engineering award given at each event and celebrates. “an elegant and advantageous machine feature”. However, judges don’t just look at robots in order to award this honor. Students must be able to share their knowledge and passion about the machine feature in an interview with the judges.

FIRST encourages the development of valuable life skills in addition to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills. They promote communication skills, as with judges’ interviews for awards. They promote cooperation and teamwork by designing games that require them to work with alliance partners in order to achieve goals and win matches. And above all, they promote Gracious Professionalism, which values both fierce competition and ultimate respect for others. In FIRST, teams compete like crazy, but help each other when they have needs, such as tools or replacement parts.

Stellar’s rock solid performance at two regional events has secured them a top two ranking in the state. The state championship event will be on May 21, 2016 at Worthington Kilbourne High School in Worthington, Ohio.

The team is grateful for the support of their many local sponsors, including North Central State College, ArcelorMittal, Lowe’s, Searchlight, The Regional Manufacturing Coalition, and SJE-Rhombus.

“Operating this non-profit group of robotics teams is like running a business,” DeYoe explains. “It takes skills of all kinds for it to be successful.” The 501(c)3 community-based non-profit robotics organization welcomes volunteers, mentors, financial supporters, and partners of all kinds to help them achieve their vision of making robotics programs available to every student in Richland County.

Stellar will be at the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library for their Opening Reception of the Discover Tech display on April 16 from noon to 3 p.m., demonstrating robots and sharing information about their programs for students ages K-12.

Alpha Centauri, Stellar Robotics’ 2016 robot, is caught in the act of scaling their opponents tower.
http://aimmedianetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2016/04/web1_DSCF2723.jpgAlpha Centauri, Stellar Robotics’ 2016 robot, is caught in the act of scaling their opponents tower.

Staff report

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