More Than 700 Elementary and Middle School Students Compete in LEGO Robotics Challenge

WHAT:           Get Excited About Robotics (GEAR) competition day

WHEN:           9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday (April 12)
                        Elementary Schools: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.; Middle Schools: 1 p.m.-5 p.m.

WHERE:         Texas Tech Rec Center, Basketball Courts

EVENT:          GEAR is an eight-week LEGO robotics challenge for elementary and middle school students in grades K-8. Student teams build and program LEGO robots, using EV3/MINDSTORMS NXT kits to perform specified tasks. To solve the challenge, students learn engineering skills through a teaming exercise in designing, building, programming, testing and troubleshooting wheeled LEGO robots that perform and compete on an eight-foot by eight-foot field.

Texas Tech freshmen engineering students mentor the elementary and middle school students and assist with robot programming.

During the last seven years, Texas Tech served as a local GEAR hub for the competition in Lubbock. During this time period, the competition has grown from a trial run held with Harwell Elementary School in 2006 to a competition with 150 participating teams. This year, more than 700 students from more than 50 schools from the Lubbock area and across the South Plains will participate.

GEAR is part of National Robotics Week.

For more information, visit the GEAR website.

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CONTACT: Tanja Karp, associate professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, (806) 834-8412, or tanja.karp@ttu.edu.