Local students creating artificial intelligence, competing in the 6th annual Robotics Competition at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Vying for a chance to win a trip to the regional contest. They're all made out of Lego's, and this year the robots are competing on the hardwood to play a mean game of robo-basketball.
Four teams, four robots, trying to score the most points.
"The goal is to get the robot to find the ball, pick it up, and make a basket," UNK Computer Science teacher Sherri Harms said.
Students had to build, design, and program these machines to do exactly what they wanted, no easy task.
"It's a big challenge for them," Harms said.
Each team had five weeks and a set of strict guidelines. Some robots couldn't handle the pressure, while one imparticular outshone the rest. They call it Robo-Shaq or just Shaq for short.
"Because it can only do one thing, dunk," UNK student Cameron Push said.
Robo-Shaq's creators spent more than 30 hours on the ball-playing machine, and it payed off. Shaq scored seven points during one match and beat out all three other teams, meaning the creators are on their way to compete in wisconsin in the regional contest. Kyle Williams, Cameron Push, and Brandon McCallister are the creators of Shaq. This robo-contest wasn't just for fun, The students have to write a paper about it and the entire project constitutes almost 15 percent of their entire grade for their Computer Science class.
