Parkway South Team To Compete in FIRST World Robotics Championships

St. Louis will host the FIRST World Robotics Championships this coming week. Teams from around the world are converging on  the Edward Jones Dome in downtown St. Louis to compete against one another to be World Robotic Champion.

One of those teams is from . The team's coach, Tim Morrison told Town and Country-Manchester Patch that this is the school's ninth year competing in this battle of the minds. 

Morrison said the way the competition works is somewhat complicated, but a lot of fun. It all starts at the beginning of the year when a new "game" comes out, and teams learn what it is they'll be playing during that year's competition. They then have a six-week deadline to build a robot from the ground up that will be their "player" in that game.

"Students have instructions, but a lot of rules to follow," Morrison said. 

The robots are then shipped off and stored with all of the other robots for various competitions.

There are a number of leagues in the robotic competitions, the Lego League, which is made up of elementary students; the FTC League, which is typically made up of high schoolers building midsize robots; and the FRC League, which is the category in which Parkway South will compete.

It's the bigger robots and the primary competition, Morrison said.

"That's where you want to be. It's the biggest competition by far," Morrison said. This year, 500 teams worldwide are competing in this competition, eight of which are from the St. Louis area, including Parkway North, he said.

Morrison said North's team is a bit smaller than South's team made up of Morrison, two adult assistants, two adult mentors and 65 Parkway South students from freshmen to seniors.

Two of Parkway South's team captains, Mitch Meyer and Brad Tucker, have been on the team for four years. The seniors began as freshman and have competed ever since.

"My freshman year my teachers really promoted the club, and I just fell in love with it. It's student run, " Meyer said. "It's really cool to get an idea or objective and then build it, fix all the problems and see it all come together. You have this giant robot at the end that accomplishes this goal."

"Ever since I started freshman year it's really been a challenge to solve a problem, because every year it's a new task," Tucker said. "It's that constant process of design and you get feedback on what you have to work on. It keeps me involved."

The Parkway South robotics team finished third in the regional competition in March, and now the team is ready to take on the world. The competitions start Thursday and last through Saturday with teams being eliminated until one team claims the world championship.

"I'm really excited to be competing again, and we get to show off all the hard work we put into building our robot from scratch," Meyer said. "It's going to be really cool to be at the world championship. We're going to meet people from around the world. We'll meet new people and see different ideas than what we've seen before."

During the competition, the teams' robots or "players" compete in "games." During these games, under strict time limits, they have to hang a golden tube on a rack, line tubes up and even deploy a mini robot also built by the team to find a climb a 10-foot pole within 10 seconds. Teams even build alliances during all of this to make it even more complex.

The teams are divided into four divisions. Parkway South is in the Archimedes Division. The winners of each division face off for the world championship.

"I think it's going to be pretty challenging. We're facing teams from around the world, " Tucker said. "I think it will be a high level of competition, but I think we'll be successful."

The competition is free to attend and runs this Thursday through Saturday.

Click here for more information on the Parkway South High School Robotics Team.

*Note - The Parkway School District said Morrison was named the 2011 Academy of Science - St. Louis MEMC Science Teacher of the Year.