RoboBibb team headed to world robotics championship

Bibb County’s robotics team is taking the Sandman to the world championships. RoboBibb won first place in the state FIRST Robotics Competition in Athens last weekend, and members will put their custom-built robot to the ultimate test in Houston, Texas, on April 19-22.

They’ll compete against groups from across the country and international teams during the 2017 FIRST Championship. RoboBibb, or Team 4941, has about 40 members, and the same 14 who went to the state event will go to Texas, said Carole Myers, the club’s lead adviser and a computer science teacher at Howard High School.

“I couldn’t be any prouder of those guys,” she said. “To see them be able to win an event, much less a state event, that was something. They were beside themselves. They’re still on cloud nine.”

The club was started in 2013 and made it to the world event that year. It’s open to all ninth- through 12th-graders in Bibb County and currently has participants from Central, Rutland and Howard high schools and Academy for Classical Education charter school.

The students had six weeks to build a robot that could perform tasks involving gears and climbing. They met at Howard High for three or four hours every Monday through Thursday and five or six hours on Saturdays, Myers said.

The team’s other advisers are Wylene Dickey of Central and Diane Byington of Rutland, and Vanessa Pabalan of Rutland and Al Raines of Howard are chaperones. Community experts also volunteered their time to help the students with their project.

“We are still gaining experience by leaps and bounds,” Myers said. “They have really come together as a team. It’s just a good group of kids, and they’ve really jelled.”

Each year, RoboBibb members compete against high school teams and county teams during two district events, for the chance to move on to the state and world levels. Matches last 2.5 minutes and put six robots on the field at the same time.

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 1:31 PM with the headline "RoboBibb team headed to world robotics championship."