Brookside MS Team Places in World Robotics Competition

From Sarasota County Schools: Brookside Middle School placed 25th in the World VEX Robotics Competition in Louisville, Ky., on April 23. One hundred sixty middle-school teams and 1,200 high school teams from 44 countries participated in the world competition.

Brookside qualified for the world competition by winning the VEX Robotics Excellence Award and being named the top team in Florida for robot skills in the state contest in Tampa on Feb. 17.

VEX Competitions are presented by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation. The contests require teams of students to design and build a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge.

Brookside team advisor Joel Kaplan said the robot his team built for the competition is a Rawr XD. It was designed and programmed to throw objects over a fence autonomously and under operator control. The teams got three tries in operator control and three tries in autonomous control. Brookside scored 54, which placed them 25th in the contest.

Team advisor Joel Kaplan said the team worked hard every day at the competition, practicing problem solving, competing at qualification rounds and meeting and collaborating with other teams from around the world.

“It was a great experience for all of my students and something most other students will not get to be part of in their school career. Immediately after the announcement of next year’s competition my students started planning their new robot and hoping to qualify for the World Competition again.

Brookside is a Sarasota County School District middle school located at 3636 S. Shade Avenue in Sarasota.

Photos courtesy of Sarasota County Schools (Brookside Middle School Robotics team advisor Joel Kaplan, left, works with team members Armand Segui, center, and Cannon Spencer on adjustments to their Rawr XD robot during the VEX Robotics World competition in Louisville. Ky.)