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Students drive away with robotics event honors
A team of students from Hacker Middle School won overall honors during a robotics competition held Saturday in Twin Falls.
The middle school sent two teams to this year's Mars Rover Challenge at the College of Southern Idaho to take on 18 teams representing fifth- and sixth-grade students from across the state.
Students selected for the competition are part of the school district's gifted and talented program. To prepare for the event, both middle school teams designed and built robotic rovers out of Lego building blocks.
Members from both teams started to prepare for the yearly robotics competition back in January. Each week, they met for two hours to iron out their designs while developing their briefings.
As part of the learning process, the students learned about different design pros and cons associated with their made-from-scratch robots. Their designs were then put to the test as they competed against teams representing schools from across southern Idaho.
Challenges featured in the yearly rover competition included a hill climb, blind drive, a rock pick up and speed test. Along with the rover events, teams had to present their findings to a panel of engineering students, who judged them on teamwork and how well they demonstrated the engineering process.
Hacker's sixth-grade students took first place in the overall competition. Meanwhile, the team of fifth-grade students finished second in the rock pick-up challenge.
Members of the sixth grade Mustache Martians squad representing Hacker Middle School included Adrie Blanksma, Luke Estes, Cole Lancaster, Jillian Oppedyk, Abigail Zuhlke and Cameron Fajardo. Fifth graders on the Tiger Martians team included Andrew Metcalf, Hannah Marshall, Breanna Todd, Caelin Coggins, Kyle Elwood and Kaitlyn Thornsberry.
The Mars Rover Challenge was the first of two events being hosted by the NASA Idaho Space Grant Consortium. Organizers will hold the northern Idaho event this weekend in Moscow.