Hundreds of high school students will descend on Robert Morris University this week for the 17th annual BotsIQ competition; an event that encourages teams of students to build robots for gladiator-style matchups against their peers.
On March 2, RMU will host this year's first set of preliminary tournaments for the competition, which in total has students from 44 high schools across 63 teams that are partaking in the event. These students come from public schools, private schools, career and technical education schools as well as those who are homeschooled. All but one of the 13 high schools partaking in the RMU preliminary events are local to western Pennsylvania; The Gow School, a co-ed college-prep boarding and day school for students with dyslexia and similar language-based learning disabilities, is from outside of Buffalo, New York.
Not to exceed 15 pounds in weight, the robots made by students in the BotsIQ competition aim to encourage participants to go on to pursue careers in advanced manufacturing or STEM. To date, BotsIQ said more than 10,000 students have gone through its competition program over the years.
"BotsIQ is working to spark student interest in manufacturing careers, address the manufacturing skills gap, and build the industry's future workforce," Michel Conklin, BotsIQ’s executive director, said in a release. "Partnering every school with local industry, provides students with an opportunity to learn that a manufacturing path not only leads to a job, but a rewarding and viable career."
The second set of preliminary competitions will be held at Westmoreland County Community College on March 15 and March 17. The final competitions will be held on April 29 and April 30 at California University of Pennsylvania.
All BotsIQ competitions are free and open for the public to attend.
The event, first launched in 2005 with six participating schools, is affiliated with the National Robotics League and is part of a manufacturing workforce development program from the nonprofit Pittsburgh Chapter National Tooling & Machining Foundation.
