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The Agribotics Competition was a hands-on robotics experience for youth, organized through Texas 4-H and hosted by Prairie View A&M University’s Cooperative Extension. Unlike many other robotics competitions, Agribotics emphasized fully autonomous robots. Student teams designed and constructed their robots and developed programs to guide them through a series of agriculture-themed tasks.
This year's city-level competition was a partnership between the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo and Prairie View A&M University. The game field and challenges simulated common agricultural processes, testing each team’s ability to combine mechanical design, programming, and strategic problem-solving.
The competition promotes STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education by allowing students to see how they can contribute to the future of agriculture through technology, even if they do not come from a traditional farming background.
Students are often given six pre-disclosed challenges and two secret "on-site" obstacles to test their ability to think critically and program under pressure. This allowed gave a benefit to practicing early, but also still rewarded on-the-spot strategy and engineering within strict time constraints.
Robot design and mechanical construction
Programming and autonomous behavior
Problem solving under competition constraints
Team collaboration and communication
Connections between technology and agriculture
Our team participated in the Agribotics Competition during the Spring 2016 season, both in the Houston-area event in March at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, and the state-level competition in May on the Prairie View A&M Campus.
In March, teams competed at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Majority of challenges were pre-released and students came to compete on the official boards. While teams came with robots they had already designed and programmed, there's always some variability between the official boards on-site and what's preprepared.
Top-scoring teams receive trophies, banners, and gift certificates, with divisions separated into junior and senior categories.
In addition to recognizing team performance at the city level, the event also gave students valuable practice and experience ahead of the state competition held later in May.
In May, we competed in the state-level event, organized and hosted by Prairie View A&M University.
This included a tour of the campus, meeting university faculty and staff, and the final state-level competition for this year's Agribotics competition.
Our students also mentored and helped a local elementary in our district, Frostwood Elementary. After several joint practices and mentor meetings, they were able to build, program, and compete in the state-level competition.