2015 Alabama Robotics Competition
In the 2015 contest, there were 55 teams participating from 42 different schools (230 overall students competing and over 350 parents/teachers/students attending).
Below are several links and information about the 2015 event.
News Stories
- Hartselle High School Wins Robotics Contest
- Calhoun County Students Compete in Robotics Contest
- UA to Host Robotics Competition
Competition Photos
- A collection of photos from the event is available here.
Competition Problems
- The official contest problems for the 2015 competition are available here.
Award Recipients
The award winners received a textbook from Pearson, a gift card to Best Buy, and a trophy. The following teams and participants received awards at the 2015 event.
Grades K-5
- First Place: Calhoun County North (300 - 2:06)
- Second Place: Tuscaloosa Magnet Elementary - Team 1 (300 - 2:43)
- Third Place: Tuscaloosa Magnet Elementary - Team 2 (240 - 2:36)
- Honorable Mention: McBride Elementary (240 - 2:44)
- Honorable Mention: Shades Mountain Elementary (240 - 3:01)
- Honorable Mention: SAKS Elementary (230 - 2:45)
- Honorable Mention: Moores Mills Intermediate (230 - 2:51)
- Honorable Mention: Alexandria Elementary (230 - 3:03)
Grades 6-8
- First Place: Berry Middle School - Team 1(300 - 1:37)
- Second Place: Muscle Shoals Middle School (300 - 2:23)
- Third Place: White Plains Middle School (300 - 2:56)
- Honorable Mention: Berry Middle School - Team 3 (290)
- Honorable Mention: Rock Quarry Middle School - Team 3 (260)
Grades 9-12
- First Place: Hartselle High School - Team 1 (300 - 2:42)
- Second Place: Alabama School of Fine Arts - Team 1 (300 - 3:00)
- Third Place: American Christian Academy (300 - 3:11)
- Honorable Mention: Hartselle High School - Team 2 (290)
- Honorable Mention: Spain Park High School - Team 2 (270)
Volunteers and Organizers
The volunteers and organizers of the 2015 event were:
- Contest Administrators
Dr. Jeff Gray
Jamie Thompson
Valerie Trull
Kathy Degraw - UA Volunteers
Angela Griffin
Autumn Jackson
Ben Yarbrough
Bria Lowe
Brian Chen
Brian Eddy
Caitlin Hanley
Chris Corley
Christian Brewton
Dustin Heaton
Eian Landis
Emily Nash
Frank Yue
Huseyin Ergin
Jake Trower
Jason Britchkow
Jenna Lisicky
Jon Hawley
Jonathan Corley
Kelly Galuska
Kelly Kashuda
Lauri Springer
Lucas Zahorik
Lydia Eubanks
Lynda Truong
Michael Hagar
Nicole Tollman
Nure Kassas
Rachel Stewart
Sasha Hedges
Tom Wan
Valerie Trull
Keynote Speaker: Dr. David Shepherd, ABB Corporate Research
Robotics Programming for Grown Ups:
How to Grow from Hobbyist to Professional
At home, students can snap together a few commands in Lego Mindstorm’s visual language to program a robot. In the real world, life is not so simple. Before even starting to work, robot programmers need a detailed 3D model of the planned site. They have to understand the relevant manufacturing process in order to choose the appropriate robots from a multitude of options. Even after they write and test the program in the lab, they must completely re-calibrate it in the field. In this talk I'll walk students through an industrial programming approach, highlighting challenges, giving them insight into the skills necessary to thrive as an industrial automation engineer.
Dr. David C. Shepherd is a Senior Principal Scientist with ABB Corporate Research where he leads a group focused on improving developer productivity and increasing software quality. His background, including becoming employee number nine at a successful software tools spinoff and working extensively on popular open source projects has focused his research on bridging the gap between academic ideas and viable industrial tools. His main research interests to date have centered on software tools that improve developers search and navigation behavior.
Keynote Slides: Available here as PPTX (400MB with included videos).
2015 Sponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the following sponsors for providing support to the 2015 Robotics Contest:
