Palm Bay High Robotics Team Soars In Competition

By  //  December 24, 2012

Squad Qualifies For National FInals

BREVARD COUNTY • PALM BAY, FLORIDA – Palm Bay High School’s PiraTech Robotics teams are sure glad they participated in the Second annual Central Florida VEX Qualifier Robotics Competitions held in Leesburg on Dec. 15.

Robotics teams from Palm Bay High School stood out in competition in Leesburg earlier this month. (Image courtesy fo Brevard Public Schools)

Team 508P comprised of Palm Bay High engineering students Nick Peters, Brian Guettler, Sandy Le and Troy St. Louis  won  the top (highest honor) Excellence in Engineering Award which was the only award at the event to qualify for the National competition in Omaha, Neb. and then World Championships in Anaheim Calif.

This prestigious award is for robotic design, autonomous control, engineering drawings, engineering notebook, their competitiveness in qualification (2nd of 40 teams) and finals rounds, and how they presented themselves being judged by engineers in a formal interview and presentation.

Team 508Z  members, Cody Jones, Bree Crisafulli and Jashal Patel,  won the VEX Build award for a robust robotic design of their holonomic drive system which ran virtually flawless  and was a high scoring robot  in the qualification matches.   They ranked sixth of 40 teams and into the finals rounds.

The three Palm Bay robots competing ran in a total of about 30-two minute rounds, with a 15 second autonomous, with all three robots performing in each match nearly perfectly with 10 motors on each robot, missing no matches.

The teams wish to send special thanks to their sponsors (Harris Corp, AT&T, The Able Trust, Northrop Grumman, Advanced Magnetic Labs, Health FIRST, Brevard Schools and Gov’t Connections) and the mentors who help practice with students their presentations, teach programming, design, help tweak their robots, drive to events, and chaperone in hotels.

On Jan. 26, Palm Bay hosts the third PiraTech Space Coast VEX Robotics Showdown which includes 30 plus teams from all over Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Palm Bay will have five robots competing in this event.

The teams are in the process of fundraising to support attendance at two events in February  in Tampa, March competitions in Orlando and Nebraska and the French National in Lyno, France during the Innorobo EU Conference  as well as the World competition in April in California.