On Saturday, March 9th the DeWitt Perry Middle School Robotics Club traveled to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to compete in the multi-state Oklahoma Botball regional competition against 55 other teams, mostly high schools.  Botball is a challenging autonomous robotics competition for middle through high school students. There are no division lines and the Perry Middle School students competed against mostly high schools. The students had 9 weeks to design, build, program and test up to two 100% autonomous robots to compete head to head in a non-violent robotics competition. The students programmed their robots in C and Python, professional computer programming languages used every day in the engineering world.  The students must also prepare a presentation to perform in front of a pair of professional engineers. The DeWitt Perry Middle School Robotics Club was formed 18 years ago and is one of the longest lived and most successful robotics clubs in the country.
After a grueling day of competition and presentations the club did very well, taking away the following awards:
Judges Choice – Best programming.
Judges Choice – Outstanding outreach
1st place – Documentation
1st place – Alliance competition
2nd place – Alliance competition
3rd place – Seeding
3rd place overall
The club sent almost 55 students to the competition, more than any other school at the competition. The club wouldn’t be able to serve the number of students that it does without the generous support of the CFBISD Advanced Academic Services department, the CFB Association of the Gifted and Talented and the wonderful staff and administration of Perry Middle School.
Congratulations, Perry Robotics Club!