TeWinkle team takes first in robotics tournament

TeWinkle Middle School’s Bot Runners took first place out of 17 Division 1 teams in Southern California and second place in all of California during the C-STEM Roboplay Challenge 2015.

The challenge was held at the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa for all Southern California teams on Saturday. Teams in Northern California competed at UC Davis the same day.

Teams compete in age groups with Division 1 for the middle school level, Division 2 for high school level and Division 3 for college level.

TeWinkle math and robotics teacher Yassi Motamed and librarian Terry Kling took three teams of seventh- and eighth-graders to the tournament: the Bot Runners, the Coding Ninjas and the Trojan Programmers.

The Bot Runners finished with a score of 255 points.

“We didn’t really think we could win because TeWinkle’s not famous for robotics or anything,” seventh-grader and Bot Runners member Ben Evans said. “But we just encouraged each other. In the end, we saw all our hard work paid off.”

It was the Costa Mesa school’s second time at the competition.

Team members learned the basics of programming Linkbots, handheld cylindrical robots, in Motamed’s Exploration in Technology class.

At the competition, Division 1 teams faced 10 challenges their Linkbots could complete on a floor mat.

Their robots performed specific tasks for each challenge, such as moving across certain lines on the mat, pushing blocks into zones, and programming the robot to dance a series of steps.

All teams are unaware of what tasks their robot will face until the morning of the competition. Students spend from 9 a.m. to noon programming their robots, then have their robots perform before the judges from 1 to 4 p.m.

Teams earned their points by attempting and completing as many challenges as they could. The Bot Runners had their Linkbots perform eight out of the 10 challenges.