Students Compete in Annual Regional Robotics Tournament at UNF

Joanna Norris, Assistant Director

Department of Media Relations and Events

(904) 620-2102

Get ready for a high-energy, high-tech educational experience as the Florida Regional Botball Tournament heads to the University of North Florida. Thirteen teams from Florida and Georgia schools will be competing Saturday, March 13, on campus at the new Student Union, Building 58W, Rooms 3703A-3703D.Seeding rounds begin at 9:30 a.m. and the tournament starts at 2 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Local teams participating in this year’s tournament include Bishop Kenny, Douglas Anderson, Fletcher, Nease and Robert E. Lee high schools, along with Landrum Middle School and St. Joseph Academy in St. Augustine.

The tournament is the concluding event for a seven-week educational robotics program featured in 13 different regions across the country, providing students and teachers alike with the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art robotics equipment not normally available to pre-college students. The competition challenges students to design and build autonomous robots whose performance and survival capabilities are demonstrated in a unique Botball game that changes each year.

Team scores include not only tournament performance but also the quality of on-line documentation each team prepares as part of the Botball program. The Florida region has been hosted by UNF since 1997 under the sponsorship of the UNF College of Computing, Engineering and Construction.

Botball Educational Robotics Programs are presented by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to linking people and technology through robotics. For more information, visit www.kipr.org.

-UNF-