Mountaineer Area Robotics (MARS) and Fairmont State University have partnered to bring the world’s only high school endurance robotics competition to Fairmont, today through Saturday.
Lasting a total of 26 hours and 14 minutes, West Virginia RObotics eXtreme (WVROX) will feature 30 teams from across the country to compete in the event.
The public is welcome to attend from 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. today and from 6 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday at the Fairmont State University Falcon Center.
MARS is part of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) program, which combines the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology. Under extensive guidelines, limited resources and time constraints, high school students are challenged to design, build and program a robot to perform specific tasks against a field of competitors. These challenges foster students’ team building, leadership, organization and communication skills while giving them a taste of real-world engineering and aid from mentors in their communities.
Teams at this year’s WVROX will play the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition game, “Crescendo.” Students aim to control robots to retrieve ring-shaped notes and score them into a 7-foot structure named the Speaker, or a smaller structure named the Amp. Additionally, robots are tasked with climbing a 2-foot chain to score notes into the Trap for bonus points.
For more information, go to marsfirst.org/wvrox.
