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By Stefan Beier, Flora Mack and Abigail Garcia
Taos Integrated School of the Arts students

On Saturday (March 2) the RoboRAVE Rally took place in Española, New Mexico. A total of 46 teams attended the Robotics Education competition from around the state, competing in nine different challenges. All the participants gathered in the Northern New Mexico College Eagle Memorial Gymnasium. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. the eager teams watched, learned and practiced for RoboRAVE International, which takes place in Albuquerque on May 3-4. The challenges they compete in are A-MAZE-ing, Alpine bot, Entrepreneurial, Fire Fighting, Iq Innovative Robot, Lighter Than Air Vehicles, Line Following, RoboEthics, Jousting and SumoBot.

TISA Principal Richard Greywolf shared, “I was excited to see so many TISA students involved in the RoboRAVE process. Robotics are part of everyday life, from cellphones to self-driving cars to the satellites that orbit our earth. To be successful in the 21st century students need to have an understanding of the robotics that surrounding our everyday lives.”

To represent Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA) we sent four teams: Urbanus Proteus,The Robot Crushers, The RoboDragons and Blue Glaucus. For a whole week we had been preparing a line-following program on our computer. On Wednesday (Feb. 27), the four teams gathered together in the multipurpose room and prepared for a competition. The third through fifth grades came in to watch the main event.

The teams ran their robot on the line course. The lines were read by the Mbot sensors: if an Mbot lost track and went off course they were out. Megan Bowers-Avina created the Mbot program at TISA with Liana Bayles, who spearheads the robotics educational programs at TWIRL. Along with generous support from RoboRAVE through TWIRL, TISA now has our own robotics program. We began with building the Mbots three weeks ago through workshops with Liana Bayles and now have a stable of 10 TISA Mbots and have already flexed our competition muscles.

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