The Eighth Annual Robot and Technology Expo will take place at the Mineral Area College Fieldhouse this Saturday.
The Lab:Revolution 4-H Technology Playground and Makerspace is hosting the event starting at 8 a.m. There will be VRC and VEX Robot competitions, a robot exhibition, scratch competition, mini workshops and a children’s tech playground.
Farmington Library Director Travis Trokey explained how the robot competitions are configured.
“VRC competitions are high-school level, we have about 35 teams registered for that,” he said. “The middle school competition is called VEX IQ. We have about 25 of those teams registered.
“[The competitions] run in seasons, we are getting near the end of the competition season. There’s different local competitions throughout the state. We are a 4-H affiliated club, a lot of clubs are formed through the schools. They go to qualifying matches throughout the season, there will be a state competition, and they can qualify for the world competition.”
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The competition follows rules determined earlier in the year on different tasks the robots are required to do during the games.
“Every year VEX creates new games,” Trokey said. “This year’s event is tower takedown. The teams build their robots, VEX creates the rules, they play on a 12 by 12 game field, they score points by manipulating different objects. This year it is different cubes they stack in different goal areas.”
The expo will have a children’s technology playground where little kids can play. Trokey noted that there is also an introduction to programming workshop and a Makerspace.
“Makerspace designation, can be just construction, some places it just Legos, or building with cardboard, it’s not necessarily electronics,” he said. “Makerspace encourages the kids to use their brains, and get interested in things they are not necessarily able to do at school. Our group, we do a lot of electronics, a lot of coding, you find kids that are interested in just tinkering, seeing how stuff works. We had an ATM donated that the kids at the shop got to break down and see how it worked.”