Four students from Brownwood Intermediate School earned the ability to compete in the State Robotics Competition on April 12th in Deer Park, Texas.

Will McIver, Jimmy Kniss, Hunter Day, and Tanner Roberts were chosen to represent their school after Brownwood Intermediate placed 2nd out of over 60 teams at the Area Competition held at Robert Lee in January, which clinched BIS one of the 60 spots in the state competition.

The state contest is hosted by TCEA and changes themes each year.  This year’s theme, Rubble Trouble, simulated a real world disaster recovery effort using Lego Mindstorm programs and robots.

“Students have been working on the game tasks since the beginning of the school year,” said Tiffany Baker, who coaches the fifth-grade robotics team along with Alysbelle Shero. “Being a part of robotics takes a lot of time and dedication.  Almost all the work on the robots and programming was done after school in the students’ own time.  All the effort paid off because the team placed 14th out of 60 teams, many of which were older and had more experience with the robots.”

While in Deer Park, located near Houston, the students elected to tour the NASA facility where they were able to explore real-life applications of science and engineering concepts.  They also had the privilege of getting to attend a question and answer session hosted by an astronaut that had been in space.

A short video from the event is viewable at: www.brownwoodisd.org/BISRobotics2014

Pictured Above:  Brownwood Intermediate Robotics team members, (left to right) Hunter Day, Will McIver, Tanner Roberts, and Jimmy Kniss.