Photo courtesy of David Norton

On April 18-21, RoboDesigners, a local robotics team, competed against hundreds of others from around the globe at the 2012 VEX Robotics World Championship in Anaheim, Calif.

The World Championship was action packed from check-in on Wednesday through finals late Saturday night. With ages ranging from middle school through college, participants from 17 countries did their best at the championship. The top 600 out of 4,800 VEX teams worldwide attended the tournament. Almost 250 matches were run in each of the four high school divisions to identify the best teams in the world.

Out of the 99 teams the Engineering division, RoboDesigners earned 21st place with seven wins and three losses, making them the top-ranked team from Virginia in that division. RoboDesigners played two of the top three teams in the world, defeating one during the qualification matches.

In VEX Robotics, teams design, build, and program erector-set-style robots to score points on a game field. This past year, robots deposited balls and barrels into circular goals ranging in height from 10 to 30 inches. Though an engineering challenge, the competition provides young people an opportunity to learn skills that will help them their future occupations.

For the past five years, RoboDesigners has led robotics teams and STEM classes. Their teams have won 18 awards in VEX and FIRST LEGO League. This is their second time to compete at the VEX World Championship, although they have qualified for the past three seasons. Visit www.RoboDesigners.com for more information about the team.

RoboDesigners consists of Andrew and David Norton of Daleville, and James Depret-Guillaume of Roanoke County.

– Submitted by David Norton