2019 South's BEST Robotics Championship
Let’s Get Ready for KICKOFF!
Aug 24, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Northwest-Shoals Community College
800 George Wallace Blvd, Muscle Shoals, AL 35661, USA
With the start of school, the BEST Robotics 2019 competition is gearing up for another challenge. BEST, which stands for Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology. The competition is a 26-year-old national program whose goal is to initiate robotics programs at no cost in middle and high schools. The South’s BEST Regional Championship, held by Auburn University’s College of Science and Mathematics (COSAM) and Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, hosts advancing teams from local hubs all over the southeast region of the United States. The South’s BEST Championship is set to be held during 2019 at Auburn University.
Each year, teams compete to build robots that tasks students with the same design challenges, time and material constraints, and competitive pressure that real-world engineers face. The game’s theme reflects issues in today’s world that robotics could potentially solve. Last year’s game, Current Events, designed by Tj Nguyen, a former BEST student, of Auburn’s Southeastern Conference of Robotics Education (SCORE), focused on ocean pollution and the havoc trash wreaks on marine ecosystems. The game focused on using robots to remove garbage, assess the garbage’s impact on wildlife, and attempt to rebuild marine habitats with recycled materials. The universal reveal of the theme on August 25 introduced the rules and game field of the year’s challenge to about 1,000 schools across the country. We can not wait to have the reveal for the 2019 theme for South's BEST Robotics competition.
Along with the robotic performance in the game, teams also compete for awards in categories like engineering design, marketing presentations, team interviews, and team spirit. BEST is so successful because of the emphasis on student and team involvement, and the encouragement it provides for creative thinking, problem-solving, and goal-directed learning. With over 16,000 students, BEST reaches an incredible amount of people, including large numbers of minorities and women. SCORE, is an Auburn University initiative through the COSAM Office of Outreach that is designed to create robotics education for K-12 students and teachers. SCORE and BEST work together to enrich robotics knowledge and increase accessibility for students and teachers of all ages. Robotics is not just for guys...or just for those interested in a career in robotics. The training received would be beneficial in any field of endeavor in the future.
Check out the photos of past events on the next few pages.