You won't believe this, but Auburn was recently invaded by robots who were controlled by teenagers. Don't worry: they were just stopping through in order to showcase their robotic skills.
Auburn's Village Mall was a host to the 9th annual BEST Robotics Mall Day this past Sunday.
George Blanks, executive director of BEST Robotics Inc., said this particular event is just practice for a competition that will be held at Auburn University's Student Activities Center October 10.
"The whole purpose is to practice driving on the field that they will be competing in," Blanks said.
Blanks described it as a competitive event that gets very tense between the competing schools.
"It's just as intense of a rivalry as there is in sports," Blanks said. "It's incredible."
Emma Seiler, assistant director of outreach of COSAM, said there is a real purpose behind the event.
"The main purpose of the game, with robotics in general, is that there's a big push for science education," Seiler said. "It's really just to get them interested and inspire them to engineering careers and science careers. It's also another way to get kids interested in science."
Seiler and her staff have important roles that coincide with the event.
"Our office is mainly in charge of awards and judging part of it which includes giving the BEST award," Seiler said. "We judge on oral presentation, table display, sportsmanship, and their notebooks. So we coordinate all the judging parts of it."
Episcopal Day School student Cameron Johnson and his team wanted to use the event as a stepping stone to bigger things.
"Right now, it's just this, but we're talking about doing some Lego stuff," Johnson said. "We also do Future City competitions."
Johnson said he and his team started out as just wanting to build robots for fun.
"The year before we started this, we just talked about building a robot," Johnson said. "We've always fooled around with electronics and stuff and just tinkering stuff."
Johnson described his team's robot as a robot that can perform simple tasks.
"Ours can pick off the globes that are hanging up," Johnson said. "We have a steel flag kind of thing on the front to get all the stuff that's on the ground."
Johnson, like the other students, has dreams of being a successful engineer.
"The field I really want to go to is engineering," Johnson said. "I think mechanical engineering is what I decided on. I always kind of wanted to build stuff on my own."
Johnson said the best thing about robotics is the hands-on experience.
"You can learn about leverage and all kinds of engineering stuff in books," Johnson said. "But once you get in and start building, you learn skills that you can use elsewhere."
The event was hosted by BEST which stands for Boosting Engineering Science and Technology.
BEST Robotics Mall Day included schools from all over Alabama which include Beverlye Magnet School in Dothan, LAMP High School in Montgomery, Loachapoka High School in Loachapoka, and Opelika High School in Opelika.
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