Ironman Robots places 2nd

The Ironman Robots, a team of homeschooled students with the Mineral Area HomeSchool Group, placed second at the B.E.S.T, Inc Robotics competition at St. Louis University on Oct. 13.

B.E.S.T. is a national organization whose purpose is to Boost Engineering, Science, and Technology among Junior and High School students in public, private, and homeschool settings. The competition at SLU was the culmination of an annual six-week engineering project, involving many hours to research and design, build and test a robot for competition against teams from throughout the Midwest.

This year’s theme was “2021: A Robot Odyssey”, and the mission was to design and build a robot that could retrieve items from a Mars Lander to provide supplies for a human colony on the harsh surface of Mars. A total of 15 teams from throughout the Midwest competed.

Winners at the SLU Billiken BEST competition go on to compete in the regional competition, to be held at the University of Fort Smith in Arkansas on Nov. 30 thru Dec. 1. This is the second year for the Mineral Area HomeSchool Group’s team to win at SLU and proceed to regionals.

Local members of the Ironman Robots team include Clayton Weems and K.C. Holmes of Farmington, and Caleb Royer of Fredericktown. Warrensburg resident, Garrick Zinecker, formerly of Caledonia, was also part of the seven member team. Younger siblings, Krischan and Hagan Zinecker, were auxiliary members to aide in the pit area during competition day, and other members’ siblings helped to make up the cheering squad.

Local students were joined by team members Veronica Lewis and Adelaide Summers from Pacific and Arielle Bohnert from Altenburg. Due to the long distances between team members, they met weekly at Victory Church in Pevely for discussion of design and to provide updates with the progress being made with the robot. Between weekly meetings, team members spent countless hours working, both individually and in local sub-groups, to prepare for the BEST competition at SLU. Meetings were held in homes and at the Pillar Foundation in St. Louis. Testing and driving the robot was held at Busenbark Carpet and Granite in Farmington.

   The B.E.S.T., Inc., competition is comprised of two main branches: robot engineering and competition, and the BEST award. The robot must be totally engineered only from parts provided to participating teams at Billiken BEST Kick-Off Day in early September. In addition to engineering the robot, students were involved in the BEST competition. Competition for the BEST award includes being judged on oral presentations before a panel of engineering judges; creating an educational booth related to the theme; gaining community involvement and sponsorship; creating a website to promote interest in science, engineering, and technology; chronicling the six-week project in an engineering notebook; and designing a team t-shirt.

All of the aspects are scored to determine which of the 15 competing teams wins the BEST award.

The BEST award, for which the Ironman Robots won second, is considered by B.E.S.T., Inc., to be their most prestigious award. Other awards won by the Ironman Robots team include third place for website design, and second place for t-shirt design.

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