JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The 5th Annual Robot Drone League (RDL) Competition took place at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) on Saturday, where more than 300 area students gathered to compete in STEM-based challenges.

The annual competition is hosted in a collaborative effort by ETSU, the Basler Center for Physical Activity and STREAMWORKS— a Kingsport-based organization that provides STEM-based educational opportunities to local students.

CEO of Streamworks Dennis Courtney told News Channel 11 that participating students have been at work since September designing and preparing a robot or drone that will effectively complete an assigned task that reflects real-life technology needs.

Each year that assigned task changes; and this year’s challenge involves “finding innovative solutions to address global food scarcity issues using cutting-edge BioBuilder technology,” Streamworks said. Teams and their robots took to a simulated crop field to put their machines to the test.

“The robots have to pick up corn,” Courtney said about this year’s challenge. “Some of it is diseased. Some of the funguses have to be identified. Once they identify the fungus on the corn, then they can select a type of EDNA, GMO seed. It’s going to be fungus-resistant. So they’re trying to figure all this out on the team of four to six students.”

Courtney said the annual RDL Competition works to bring participants a new, realistic engineering scenario every year, skills he said are essential to entering a 21st-century workforce.

“We’re trying to help develop the next work line, well, the workforce, the pipeline. And that’s critical right now. And that’s where initiatives like Robot Drone League help get the kids off of the video games and off the couch. And they’re actually doing something; they’re actually preparing for the skill sets needed for the workforce. That’s what it’s about.”

He said much more than programming and science go into the competition, though. Students who compete are forced to communicate, collaborate and work as a well-seasoned team in order to finish the task.

“Collaboration, communication, electrical programming, computer science, everything is combined into one exciting ten-minute match. And here we are for the championship.”

More information on the Robot Drone League can be found at Robotdroneleague.com.

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