More than 3,000 middle and high school innovators from around the world descend on Dallas for the VEX Robotics World Championship.
Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
What do you get when you give robot kits to more than 3,000 students from around the world and then bring them all together in one place? Some blazing mechatronic battles.
The middle school, high school, and university students from 14 countries, along with their mentors, descended on the Dallas Convention Center and Arena April 22-24. The occasion was the 2010 VEX Robotics World Championship, in which budding roboticists build their own VEX kit robots and take on several challenges--as well as rival teams.
Here, a student from Worcester Technical High School in Worcester, Mass., prepares her robot for battle. Industry officials from sponsors like NASA were on hand to scout out potential talent.
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Lamar High School
The Disco Bots team from Lamar High School in Houston gets ready for the qualification rounds at the 2010 VEX Robotics World Championship. Students use the VEX Robotics Design System, an educational robotics platform aimed at fostering science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills.
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College challenge
Students go head-to-head in Clean Sweep, a game in which remote-controlled robots are used to push balls of different sizes onto the opponent's field. The side with more balls after 2 minutes, 20 seconds loses. During the first 20 seconds of the game, robots operate autonomously.
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Cross Keys High School
Budding robot engineers from Cross Keys High School in Atlanta make adjustments before qualification rounds in the practice fields at the 2010 VEX Robotics World Championship. Their robot is designed to put balls over a small barrier and into the opponent's field in Clean Sweep.
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Smart Cubo
The Smart Cubo team from Queretaro, Mexico, joined qualifying teams from countries including Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States for three days of high-energy robotics challenges.
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University Garden High School
A student from University Garden High School in San Juan, Puerto Rico, checks his robot at the 2010 VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas. An alliance of students from China and New Zealand won the competition, which was sponsored by VEX Robotics, a subsidiary of Innovation First International, based in Greenville, Texas.
