Teams of middle and high school students from across Arkansas will compete “robot-to-robot” this Saturday, March 17, at the annual Arkansas Regional Botball Robotics Tournament at UALR’s Dickinson Hall Auditorium. The competition is sponsored by UALR’s CyberCollege – the Donaghey College of Information Science and Systems Engineering.
Tournament events are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. with seeding rounds with double elimination rounds set for 2:30 p.m. An awards ceremony will follow at approximately 5 p.m.
Botball, a creation of NASA veterans of the Mars Rover project, is an intellectual team sport that uses computer programming and artificial intelligence skills pitting each team’s small robot into an intense competition to complete a task. The competition promotes an interest in math and science and requires teamwork, logic, problem-solving skills, and engineering ability.
As educational coordinator for the region’s Botball competition, UALR CyberCollege faculty use the event to promote high-thinking math and engineering skills and to recruit promising students to the CyberCollege program. The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Science and the Arts, Arkadelphia High School, Crossgate Christian Academy, J.A. Fair High School, Mid-America Science Museum, Pope County 4H/Dover High School and Camden Fairview High School will all have teams entered in the competition.
The tournament is part of the Botball Educational Robotics Program through the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics in Norman, Okla.
For more information about the tournament contact Howard Walker, UALR CyberCollege’s NASA CyberMission Specialist, at (501) 960-1173 or hwwalker@ualr.edu