Dr. Carter Tiernan
Students from DFW-area high schools will face off Saturday, Feb. 4, at the University of
Texas at Arlington to see whose robot can navigate through a maze without direct control or find
an object using vision and touch. The competition, called RoPro, is the sixth annual high school
programming contest sponsored by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UT-Arlington.
One hundred students from high schools in Arlington, Dallas and DeSoto, as well as home schools
are scheduled to participate. Students have been working for weeks in computer classes and after
school, programming the robots to perform the tasks. Prizes include 10 $500 scholarships that all
contestants are eligible for and 10 $1,000 scholarships that students on the winning teams are
eligible to receive.
Using identical robotic kits, students demonstrate their programming skills to get the
robots to achieve maximum performance in three assigned tasks:
"RoPro exposes high school students to the challenges of computer science and programming,
mixed with the fun of competition," said Dr. Carter Tiernan, senior lecturer and Director
of Outreach for the Computer Science & Engineering Department.
For additional information, please contact Dr. Tiernan in the CSE Department,
or 817 272-3588.