Six area robotics teams advance to world competition

Six teams from the Kansas City area will be moving on to compete in the world robotics championship competition in St. Louis after winners of this weekend’s Greater Kansas City Regional FIRST Robotics competition were announced Saturday night.

The competition’s top award went to the UP Next Community Team, comprised of home-schooled students and students from schools throughout the region that did not field a team.

Other area teams that qualified for the world championship: Lee’s Summit West High School, the Independence School District, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, Smithville High School and the North Kansas City School District.

More than 1,000 high school students on 58 teams took part in the competition at the Metropolitan Community College-Business and Technology campus at 1175 Universal Ave.

In this year’s competition, students worked with professional mentors to design and build robots for a game called Aerial Assist, in which the robots throw and catch balls and attempt to score as many goals as possible during a two-minute and 30-second match.

The world championship competition is April 23-26.

This story was originally published March 15, 2014 at 8:09 PM with the headline "Six area robotics teams advance to world competition."