Fort Wayne Community Schools
The South Side Robotics Invitational will be held from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, March 8, at South Side High School, 3601 S. Calhoun St. The free event is held in cooperation with Youth-Building Our Tomorrow. Teams from 12 regional high schools (South Side, Wayne, Elmhurst, North Side, Northrop, Harding, West Noble, Canterbury, Bishop Dwenger, Carroll, Bellmont, and Concordia) will compete in the third annual robotics competition. Teams have spent four months building and modifying their robots while competing against one another at monthly meets. This will be the final chance for teams to improve their robots and strategies prior to the April 12 finals at West Noble. Unlike other robotics competitions, Youth-Building of Tomorrow is free of charge and open to all regional schools. While teams do compete against one another, the attempt is never to destroy the other robots in a robot war style game. Instead, teams must find ways to accomplish tasks and not have all their points stolen by the other team. The competitions encourage students to brainstorm better strategies, improve robot designs and computer programs and work together. Each year, a student is awarded a full-tuition scholarship from Northrop Grumman Corporation to attend the engineering program at IPFW. This year, the competition is also receiving financial support from a Jordan Fundamentals Grant, which helps students achieve their goals. More information may be found on the Youth - B.O.T. website www.youthbotin.org.