INDIANAPOLIS — Paramount School of Excellence’s VEX IQ Robotics returned to VEX IQ World Championship April 15-18. Seven students and three coaches joined top-ranked teams from around the world in Louisville, Kentucky at the intense four-day annual robotics-engineering tournament. The competition attracts more than 800 teams and 15,000 students from over 25 countries to celebrate their accomplishments and further inspire their interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
This year Paramount qualified for two coveted team spots at the World Championship. Both teams secured their competition spot by successfully competing at the state level. The elementary team was awarded the Design Award and the middle school team received the sought-after Excellence Award.
The teams’ participation at the World Championship is the culmination of months of preparation. Annually, the competitive robotics teams are tasked with designing and building robots to compete against each other in a game-based engineering challenge. Skyrise, the 2014-2015 task, requires teams to battle it out for maximum points by building towers and moving colored cubes around to goal posts. Structural, mechanical and electrical engineering, plus computer science concepts are combined to build innovative robots designed to score the most points possible during a challenge. Throughout the school year, the Paramount VEX IQ Teams met weekly — accumulating more than 400 hours in programming, executing improvements, practicing and refining their presentation skills.
