FUELBOTS: The Homeschool Robotics Team

FUELBOTS: The Homeschool Robotics Team

By Sam Hughes

sam@southerntorch.com

RAINSVILLE, Ala.— Gavin Cowart is a homeschool student who is participating in the Boosting Engineering Science And Technology (BEST) Robotics Competition for the first time. Gavin started a robotics team with the help of his friends, as well as the guidance and support of his team sponsor (and mother) Hannah Cowart.

Their team, FUELbots, is an extension of their homeschool co-op, Families United for Enrichment and Learning(FUEL). FUELbots is comprised of eleven students ranging in ages from 10 to 16. The FUELbots will compete against 16 other teams from private, public, and home-schools in Marshall, Jackson, and DeKalb counties on Saturday, Nov. 7, at the Northeast Alabama Agri-Business Center for the Northeast Alabama regional competition. The winners of the competition will proceed to the national competition in Auburn.

The competing teams are only given six weeks to prepare for “game day.” On “game day,” the robots will compete with each other to perform specific task described at the beginning of the six week period.

The BEST Robotics Competition is not solely about the robot as one would believe. The robot’s performance only accounts for 15 percent of the entire competition. The remaining parts of the competition include an engineering notebook, a marketing presentation, a team interview, a team presentation booth, and most importantly team spirit. “This competition is not just about the robot, it’s about the students learning how to build a business, marketing the business, functioning as a team, and running a business in general. It’s just disguised in a robotics competition,” said team sponsor, Hannah Cowart.

“The students are responsible for fundraising, communication, marketing, and building the actual robot. The biggest difference in our team is there is usually not a robotics mentor around most of the time and the students are building the robot all by themselves,” said Cowart.

Noah Austin, a member of the FUELbots team said, “I’ve learned a lot from the competition like group cooperation and communication skills, software programming, cooperate organization, and goal planning to name a few.”

Team members include Thomas Austin. Kyle Fortner, Kennon Fortner, Konnor Fortner, Isabella Shelly, Abigail Mann, Gavin Cowart, Andrew Shelly, Ben Austin, JT Shelly, and Noah Austin.