BotsIQ brings manufacturing, teamwork to Westmoreland County Community College

Bots battled, sparks flew and high school students cheered at Westmoreland County Community College.

The college on Tuesday hosted the second round of preliminaries for BotsIQ, a regional competition in which student-made robots fight each other gladiator-style. A third round will be held Thursday on the Hempfield campus.

Dozens of students from 17 regional high schools competed. Each team spent months preparing, designing and manufacturing their robot before the event.

Hunter Galante, a junior at Monessen High School, said the bracket-style competition has professional and social benefits.

“(BotsIQ) provides a lot of opportunities,” Galante said. “I like working with small groups; it’s fun. The team chemistry is there.”

The 17th annual event held its first round of preliminaries March 2 at Robert Morris University. The final competition will occur April 29-30 at California University of Pennsylvania.

While no team eliminations occur now, the preliminaries will be used to seed the final competition.

Each team had to follow a 40-page book of technical guidelines when constructing their 15-pound robots. Some teams reused and revamped bots from previous years, while other teams designed their bots from scratch.

Cally Fleming, Springdale Junior-Senior High School’s team adviser and 2018 BotsIQ alumna, described the creation process as a “roller coaster.” It is lengthy and time-consuming, she explained.

The bots must be approved by a team of safety inspectors before each battle.

During a battle, two bots enter a pit and duel it out. Students remote-control the bots several feet away from the pit as a panel of judges watches the battle up close.

The bots, armed with weapons and wheels, maneuver around the pit as they try to dodge blows and damage their competitor.

BotsIQ is open to spectators. William Teeter, a BotsIQ volunteer, looked forward to watching the bots fight at his first competition.

He voiced respect for the students’ creativity and intelligence.

“Everybody can’t be 6-foot-8, playing basketball,” Teeter said. “Maybe one day these guys will be treated like superstars, like they should be, for having a brain and using it.”

The event aims to give students industry experience. BotsIQ is a nonprofit, manufacturing workforce development program and part of the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Tooling & Machining Foundation.

Byron Kohut, the dean of WCCC’s School of Technology, applauded BotsIQ for teaching young people about electronics and machining. He’d like to see competitions like this at the elementary school age.

“The sooner that people are able to be exposed to this type of work, the better off they’re going to be in the future,” Kohut said. “There are so many opportunities. (Students) just have to learn what’s out there.”

BotsIQ also helps students learn life skills such as teamwork, responsibility and productivity.

Lorelei Damico, a junior at Greensburg Salem High School, said preparing the bot for competition was a “complicated process.” Her teammates had to rely on each other to see their bot come to life.

“I definitely learned how to work with a big group of people on a small thing and figure out who does what and how to make it all flow efficiently to use time as best as possible,” Damico said.

Tori Jones, also a junior at Greensburg Salem, said she typically struggles working with other people, but BotsIQ helped her learn the importance of teamwork.

Students will have time to take into account what they learned from the preliminary rounds for the CalU finals.

Fleming believes she and her team gained valuable knowledge already.

“I think between now and April, it’s going to be a completely different team,” Fleming said. “We will talk in class about what went well, what didn’t, how we can improve, how we cannot forget things next time. (We will) grow from the experience.”