West Loop Campus hosts VEX Robotics Competition

Dec 17, 2018

In an epic engineering challenge, teams of young techies descended on the HCC West Loop campus Dec. 15 to compete against their high school counterparts in a robotic competition.

About 100 students took part in the VEX Robotics Competition, co-hosted by Urban STEM and the HCC Digital and Information Technology Center of Excellence. The 23 teams showed off their programming and coding skills, as well as their ability to solve problems.

“These are the conflict skills needed for the (IT) industry,” said Sean Otmishi, dean of the Center of Excellence. “The competition aligns directly with our dual-credit initiative and our plans to create a new two-year program in robotics.”

During the daylong competition, the students were tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Classroom STEM concepts were put to the test as students learned lifelong skills in areas including teamwork, leadership and communications.

The VEX Robotics Competition is presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation. Tournaments are held year-round at the regional, state and national levels and culminate at the VEX Robotics World Championship each April.