Sanford Regional Technical Center students have won the competition, Robo Rescue Challenge at the 47th annual National Leadership and Skills Conference (NLSC). The NLSC that was conducted in Kansas was a platform for technical students.
Robo Rescue Challenge was not like an actual competition, it was more like a demonstration activity. Three students of Sanford High School who won the event were William Wallace, Passe Meas and Abby Mallar.
The criterion for this event was to construct a robot and make it collect a bottle of water by passing a blocked path. The robot must give the bottle to a person and reach back to the place from where it started. The time limit for this challenge was four minutes. The students had designed the robot on their own from a set of materials. They must stand behind a screen and operate the robot to cross the blockage without viewing it. The competition also had an interview session and a collection of portfolio for the event.
On the day of the competition, the SRTC students found their robot to be slow and made some corrections by changing a gear at the last moment. This increased the speed of the robot and made them to win the competition against three other competitive groups. Certificates were distributed to the students appreciating their hard work.
The number of career and technical department students who participated in this event exceeded 4,000. All of them were state-level winners who competed in 77 different fields such as leadership, technical and trade.