Engineering team ready for weekend competition

The RCS Engineering team is gearing up for their first competition this Saturday and they are hoping to have plenty of community support.
RCS Engineering sponsor Lee Brownell said at the team’s Community Night on Monday that having supporters from back home can actually help the team score more point in the competition.
“In addition to the other components of the competition, we receive spirit and sportsmanship points as well, so the more people in the stands for us the more points we can get,” Brownell said.
“We know there will be a lot of parents and family members of the kids who will show up, but we’d love to have just people in the community come out and show their support for these students and what they’re doing.”
The competition is sponsored by BEST Robotics, Inc., which is a non-profit and volunteer-based organization whose purpose is to get middle and high school students interested in the STEM-related fields.
Brownell said the competition is set up as a business competition.
“RCS Engineering is actually considered a ‘business’ that has been given a problem by BEST Robotics, Inc., and RCS Engineering will be competing against other engineering and robotics teams from other schools to win a ‘contract’ for the product they are expected to build,” Brownell said.
He said this year’s problem for the competition was to build a robot that would simulate a space elevator. It has to climb a 10 foot-tall pole and take materials to and from the ground.
“But since it’s a business competition, we not only have to build our product, but we have to sell the product as well,” he said.
“Our marketing team will present their pitch to a panel of four judges. We’ll also have a trade show booth that showcases our product and our company’s accomplishments.”
Brownell said the competition was very interesting, so coming to support the students would be beneficial to both students and supporters alike.
The competition will take place this Saturday, Nov. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the gym on the Muscle Shoals campus of Northwest-Shoals Community College.