Last Saturday, February 3rd, 2007, the Nedderman Hall atrium was full of robots zipping around corners, searching for golf balls, and stopping at blue lines. It was the 7th Annual High School Robot Programming Contest - RoPro. Sponsored by the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UTA (CSE@UTA) this annual recruiting and outreach event brings high school teams from around the Metroplex to UTA to compete in beginning maze competitions where there is a "need for speed", object finding competitions where robots look for pesky little red or black golf balls, and advanced maze competitions where lines are the floor have to be treated just like solid walls.

The seventeen participating teams came from high schools including Arlington, Sam Houston, and James Bowie from Arlington ISD, the Science and Engineering Magnet and the Talented and Gifted Magnet from Dallas ISD and area home schools. Each team built and programmed autonomous Lego robots for these challenges. Once the student pressed the start button, the robot was completely on its own, trying to accomplish its task using the "smarts" the students had programmed into it. They were great!

The fabulous teachers who work with these student teams use the RoPro event as a teaching tool to practice concepts learned in class. The results are fun as well as instructive for the students. This RoPro competition will also assist some of these students in their future. By participating in RoPro this year any student team member who is accepted to UTA in the CSE dept will receive a $1000 scholarship. If their team won an award this year then they will receive a $2000 scholarship to CSE@UTA. We currently have former RoPro competitors in our department and two of this year's competitors have already contacted us about their future in CSE@UTA

For the 2007 CSE@UTA RoPro competition, the winning teams were:

School	Team Name	Competition	Award
TECH Homeschool	007	Beginning Maze	First place
Science and Engineering Magnet	SEM Stonecutters A	Beginning Maze	Second place
Sam Houston High School	Ultralisk	Beginning Maze	Third place
TECH Homeschool	Squirt	Advanced Maze	First place
Sam Houston High School	Nuclear Terabyte	Advanced Maze	Second place
Science and Engineering Magnet	SEM Stonecutters 1	Object Finding	First place
Sam Houston High School	Nuclear Terabyte	Object Finding	Second place
TECH Homeschool	Squirt	Object Finding	Third place
Arlington High School	Your Mom is a Robot	Engineering Design	Award of Merit
TECH Homeschool	Squirt	Artistic Design	Award of Merit

Next year's RoPro competition will be held February 9th, 2008. If you know of a high school that might be interested in participating in this free competition, have them contact Dr. Carter Tiernan (tiernan AT cse.uta.edu) to get involved. More information about this event is available at www.cse.uta.edu/Robots/.