Hartselle High School’s robotics team won first place in the Alabama Robotics Competition at The University of Alabama April 11.

They competed against over 60 teams from 44 different schools across the state in the fifth year of competition hosted by the UA College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science.

In their first year of robotics competition, Hartselle took home first place with a perfect score by successfully completing all three challenges before any of the other teams in the high school division. Hartselle was the only high school to place two teams in the top five places with a second team finishing fourth.

The competition focuses on completing autonomously controlled robotics challenges. Each student-lead team was allowed to choose an appropriate robotics platform and a programming environment for the competition. Students were judged on how their robots performed while competing a series of obstacle courses. The challenges were unknown to students before their arrival at UA, and each team was given three hours to develop strategies to solve the challenges, and convert their ideas into computer programs that would then carry out their instructions on the playing field.

The students could only work directly with their team members during the competition. Smart phones and interaction with parents and teachers for advice or help was strictly forbidden.

HHS robotics team members are Blake Mozley, Ivy Buchanan, Chase Pernatozzi, Devan Deloach, Westin Corsbie, Chris Bartholomew, Lucas Wilt, Aguedo Gonzalez, Billy Partain and Jacob Ransom.