HMS and HNES Robotics Excel at World Competition
The Hutto Middle School Robotics Team secured the 1st Place overall Excellence Award at the recent Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation’s Live Remote VEX Robotics World Championship 2021. Guinness World Records® has recognized the competition as the Largest Online Robot Championships. During the live remote event, over 1,600 teams from 30 countries and 49 US states competed in timed, heart-pounding robotics competition matches with their custom-built robots.
At the same event, the Howard Norman Elementary robotics team placed 16th overall and won the Judges Award, which is given to one team based on their outstanding communication, collaboration, and perseverance. Elementary teams were divided into four divisions, and the HNES team competed directly against teams from the USA, Egypt, Finland, Australia, South Korea, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. "We are very proud of their accomplishments this season, and it's an honor to have our students recognized for these traits while competing at the world's highest level of robotics," said HNES Robotics Coach Rebecca Bales.
At the middle school level, teams from around the world were placed into five divisions. HMS won the overall Excellence Award for its division, an award that includes Robot Performance, Engineering Notebook & Team Interview. The team's robot performance placed 2nd in its division.
Hutto Middle School Robotics Coach Ryan Mann said, “I am unbelievably proud of the hard work and dedication of the HMS Students who have represented the Hippo Nation with distinction. The team persevered during a challenging year to successfully compete against teams from around the world.”
To ensure the safety of its robotics community due to the pandemic, this unique event adapted to a virtual format. Typically, the annual VEX Robotics World Championship attracts more than 30,000 attendees from all 50 states and more than 70 nations. The newly created Live Remote Tournament (LRT) and Live Remote Skills (LRS) interfaces leveraged interactive and real-time video streaming to unite teams from around the globe with their competition fields and robots to crown champions like never before.