2024 Alabama Robotics Competition
In the 2024 contest, there were over 60 teams participating from 38 different schools (232 overall students competing and over 400 parents/teachers attending).
Below are several links and information about the 2024 event.
Competition Photos
- A collection of photos from the event is available here.
Competition Problems
- The official contest problems for the 2024 competition are available here.
Competition Schedule and Team Rosters
- The official contest schedule and team rosters for the 2024 competition is available here.
Award Recipients
The award winners received a textbook from zyBooks, a Visa gift card, and a trophy. The following teams and participants received awards at the 2024 event (the team numbers can be cross-referenced with the official contest schedule and team rosters for student names).
Grades K-5
- First Place: Verner Elementary School #19 (150 points)
- Second Place: JE Williams Boys and Girls Clubs #4 (110 points)
- Third Place: McBride Elementary School #8 (100 points) at time 12:28pm
- Honorable Mention: Central Elementary School #2 (100 points) at time 12:56pm
- Four-way tie with Rock Quarry Elementary #49 (100 points at 1:00pm) and Walnut Grove #21 (100 points at 1:25)
Grades 6-8
- First Place: Calera Middle School #27 (150 points) at 1:55pm
- Second Place: Northridge Middle School #38 (150 points) at 2:04pm
- Third Place: Northridge Middle School #37 (120 points)
- Honorable Mention: Greensboro Middle School #33 (100 points)
Grades 9-12
- First Place: Northridge High School #57 (180 points)
- Second Place: Stanhope-Elmore High School #62 (125 points)
- Third Place: Paul Bryant High School #58 (100 points) at 12:30pm
- Honorable Mention: Brookwood High School #49 (100 points) at 1:34pm
Volunteers and Organizers
The volunteers and organizers of the 2024 event were:
- Contest Administrators
Dr. Jeff Gray
Christopher Ray
Jamie Thompson
Ziliang Zhang
Herart Dominggus Nurue - Contest Volunteers
Awwal Badru
Jody Beck
Dr. Sadie Beck
Micaela Bravo
Shengting Cao
Trinity Causey
Pratiksha Chaudhari
Dr. Amanda Cramer
Dr. Lisa Fowler
Darralynn Joiner
Brandon Kantorski
Nico Kaple
Dr. Joni Lakin
Taylor Lamon
Jiacheng Li
Trina Locklear
Esmeralda Macario
Maclane May
Edwin McCorquodale
Nuzhat Noeri
Kelvin Ovabor
Truman Porter
Rachel Qualls
Brian Rose
Dawson Sconyers
Dean Tiffany Sippial
Daisy Situ
Megan Stewart
Ryan Strozensky
Adam Swanton
Archer Taylor
Dr. Hope Whiteside
Xue Wu
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Vishesh Vikas (UA Agile Robotics Lab)
Shape-changing Robots using Soft Materials and Tensegrity Principles
Robots are becoming our new friends – we use them for cleaning houses (e.g., Roomba), toys, autonomous driving cars and other daily tasks. The next generation robots will have the unique ability to safely interact with humans, change shapes and perform complicated tasks. Introducing soft materials and tensegrity principles into robot designs imparts these attributes. Imagine a swarm of robots that can crawl to explore an environment, and, upon completion of this task, combine into a spherical ball and roll out. The rolling of a soccer ball is very different from crawling motion of a four legged robot, and these motions can assist these robots to maneuver difficult terrains. The talk will introduce how the fundamental principles of geometry are used to design these robots, and also introduce how to use combination of cables and rigid struts to make resilient tensegrity robots.
Dr. Vishesh Vikas is an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at University of Alabama (UA) and director of the Agile Robotics Lab (ARL, https://arl.ua.edu/). He obtained is PhD from University of Florida, Gainesville and was postdoctoral researcher in Tufts University, Medford thereafter. He teaches courses in mechatronics and robotics, and has research interests in soft robots, tensegrity robots with applications to exosuit design, agriculture robotics, underwater robotics, space robotics, and search & rescue.
2024 Sponsors
We are very grateful to the Alabama Transportation Institute (Mobility and Power Center), zyBooks , Firia Labs, as our main sponsors, as well as the UA Department of Computer Science!
