Video: Starkville High Students Prep for Robotics Competition

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Students at Starkville High are preparing to show off their newly built robot in a local competition.

“This year the game scenario is CPU construction. We’re building a new CPU for a robot called Squeaky to upgrade Squeaky from its present state to Squeaky 2.0,” says Kelley Mazzola, CEO of the Stark Tech Robotics Team at Starkville High.

The Millsaps Career and Tech Center students are gearing up to compete in the best robotics competition in the state.

The challenge for the Starkville High School Robotic Team is to take transitors and other parts and create a CPU. A robotic arm will take a simulated computer part and place it in the CPU.

The Jubilee Best in Mobile, Alabama chose this year’s CPU theme. Each team has 42 days to build and market a robot.

“Right now I’m working on the marketing presentation power point and we’re going to present it to the judges who are potential buyers and I think they’re looking for something that’s going to be efficient and cheap basically. No one wants to spend a lot of money on something that does not work,” says Team Marketing Coordinator Lakendrea Young.

Though there is no actual prize money involved, students are rewarded in a different way.

“Being at the competition last year was amazing and the winning. I mean obviously the first reason you would do anything is to have fun. But the 2nd or 3rd reason you do a lot of things is to be successful and to do well,” says Will Klein, a Starkville High Robotics Team member.

And they have done well. Last year the team placed 8th overall in the region and took 2nd place for their booth display.

The robotics competition will be held later on this month at Starkville High School.