Last year, the Penguin-eers robotics team from the Pine Belt Robotics Academy and Enrichment Center in Hattiesburg kicked off the summer with a trip to the VEX IQ Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas, where they placed 21st in their division.
That team made a repeat showing last month, along with the Dragon Bots – one of the academy’s other teams – where both groups came home with several awards from their division.
“I am extremely proud of their accomplishments,” said Nadine Amaya, founder of Pine Belt Robotics Academy and Enrichment Center. “They’re relatively new teams and young students, so for them to accomplish that is an amazing feat, being from Mississippi.
“They were competing against teams from around the world, so I think about 40 countries were represented. So it was very exciting.”
The Penguin-eers team is made up of Nate Rouse from Benedict Day School, William Grayson from Sacred Heart and Kyron Minor from Oak Grove Middle School. The Dragon Bots are Hudson Glover of Presbyterian Christian School, Owen Myrick of Oak Grove Elementary School and Terrance Taylor of Oak Grove Elementary School.
For their part in the world championship, the students competed in teamwork challenges, where they were paired with 10 different teams. They also had the opportunity to compete in drivers’ skills matches and autonomous programming matches, where scores were combined to give one Robots Skills score.
The teams were able to turn in their engineering notebooks, which the students have worked on all year, to be evaluated by judges.
“They looked at … their performance, sportsmanship and dedication at the tournament to determine the winners in their divisions,” Amaya said.
The teams advanced to the world championship based on their performance at the recent state championship. At that competition, the Penguin-eers won the Excellence Award and the Robot Skills Award, both of which are qualifying awards.
The Dragon Bots won the Design Award at State, which sent them to the world championship.
And as fresh as the recent accomplishments at World are, the two teams are wasting no time getting ready for their next projects.
“They’re already starting to brainstorm and work on design ideas for the new games for the 2023-2024 competition season,” Amaya said. “On the last day of Worlds (during) the closing ceremonies, they released the new game for the season, so they immediately started working for next year.
“So they’re going to have to do a new robot design, new programming challenges, a brand-new notebook. They can’t wait to get started.”
In addition, Pine Belt Robotics Academy and Enrichment Center, which is located in Anatomies on 98thPlace Boulevard in Hattiesburg recently kicked off its latest round of summer camps, which will run for the next seven weeks or so. The camps, which are open to rising kindergarteners to rising 10th-graders, range from Coding with Sphero to TEAM Robotics BUILD Camp and LEGO STEAM Intermediate Camp.
For more information on registering for the camps, visit www.pinebeltroboticsacademy.com or call (601) 466-2465.
“What’s unique about it is that we have a variety of offerings again this year, and a variety of instructors from our community that will be sharing their experiences with students in the camps,” Amaya said.
