AUSTIN (KXAN) — A little robot gobbles up little blocks on the floor of St. Michael’s Catholic Preparatory School’s gym. In the skies above it, two drones, one big and one small, flash lights at one another. Around it, robotic balls roll across the floor towards a wooden maze.
Crowds of high school students, parents and teachers whoop and ahh as the machines work. They stand outside a mesh cage match. Each machine vying for points in a competition to see how teenagers from across the United States can push the edges of innovation.
The Advanced Vertical Robotics competition has been in Austin before. Some of the students now competing for their third year. This time, the two-day game is titled “Clear the Beach!” Robots must clean up a fake coast, send signals over a wooden mountain and bring their bots home.
“The main goal is to engineer a way for each vehicle to work in tandem with one another,” said William Radke, a general programmer with St. Michael’s Falcon Fighters team. The junior worked on a ground mech charged with collecting the little blocks for points.
His team took a different approach to the challenge, designing a robot mouth that eats the blocks. Little spinning wheels suck up the blocks, depositing them in a storage container in the back that can later deliver them to a scoring bucket.
“There’s so much opportunity for you to do your own things, which is amazing to us,” said Falcon Fighters team captain Henry Hubbard.
Hubbard had to figure out how to fly that scoring bucket over the fake mountain. He designed an electromagnet capable of picking up the bucket and wheels that helped the drone taxi across the floor.
“We can push the dumpster in, back out and take off, and then same thing when we’re pulling the dumpster back out,” Hubbard said.
The AVR competition is one of two happening this month in Texas. Teams from San Antonio and even Virginia are participating. Its part of a larger trend for robotics in high schools.
According to market research group Global Growth Insights, more than 35% of high schools in the U.S. offered robotics programs in 2023. A number that’s grown over the last decade.
For Radke, the programs are setting him up for success. He plans to be an electrical engineer after college. “I just love solving issues that people deem as super challenging,” he said.
This is the second year St. Michael’s has hosted the competition. Each team participates in four rounds. The final day is tomorrow, but a second competition is scheduled for next week in Haslet, Texas.
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