Nelson County ATC youth to compete Saturday in robotics competition
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, 1:15 p.m. — A team of students from the Nelson County Area Technology Center will be putting t
heir robot-making skills to the test Saturday in Bowling Green at the 12th annual Kentucky Bluegrass Robotics Competition, sponsored by the engineering department at Western Kentucky University.
A record 20 teams from 17 schools have signed up for the competition. The competition is the department’s primary high school outreach effort and provides students with a challenging engineering design experience and teachers with guidance in teaching engineering topics.
For several weeks, students, led by Nelson ATC teacher Charlie Cantrill, have been designing and building their robot as part of the after-school SkillsUSA program.
The local high school students were tasked with building a robot using construction materials provided by WKU; the robots must be able to pick up and move a variety of objects in a series of competitions with other teams’ robots.
WKU Engineering faculty member Kevin Schmaltz is coordinating the department’s efforts, with faculty and staff members Robert Choate, Julie Ellis, Chris Moore, Shane Palmquist, Ron Rizzo and Stacy Wilson providing major support for this effort. In addition, more than 100 current WKU engineering students support the set up and execution of the event during the fall semester, including the Electrical Engineering student section of IEEE.
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