{"id":28012,"date":"2024-04-24T18:56:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T00:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pcc-students-compete-and-win-awards-at-robotics-competition\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:18:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:18:33","slug":"pcc-students-compete-and-win-awards-at-robotics-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pcc-students-compete-and-win-awards-at-robotics-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"PCC students compete and win awards at robotics competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Six
Six students from Pueblo Community College Southwest competed in the Colorado Space Grant Consortium\u2019s Robotics Challenge earlier this month. (Melissa Watters\/Courtesy photos)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Pueblo Community College Southwest sent two robotics teams to the Colorado Space Grant Consortium\u2019s Robotics Challenge on April 13, and both teams won awards.<\/p>\n

According to PCC\u2019s STEM Academic and Career Expert Melissa Watters, the team of Matthew Troyer and Jonathan Nez won the Outstanding Demonstration of Advanced Autonomy certificate for their rover Marvin the Martian, while Carter Tanner, Leo Morey, Graham Messinger and Ben Carpenter\u2019s robot Sandy Britches was given the Sojourner award for exemplary effort for a team new to robotics.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir six-wheeled rover was able to successfully complete all of the courses at the challenge,\u201d Watters said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Watters shared that the challenge was created to \u201cprovide hands-on experiences to develop engineering and science skills using the excitement of NASA.\u201d The competition took place at the Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa.<\/p>\n

Watters helped guide and mentor the two teams, and she said they spent the 2023-2024 semesters designing and building their autonomous rovers to participate in the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge consists of six courses with obstacles of increasing difficulty. The rovers were programmed to avoid obstacles and navigate to the end of each course,\u201d Watters said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The team that created Marvin the Martian, Nez and Troyer, are college students at PCC, while the team who created Sandy Britches \u2013 Tanner, Morey, Messinger and Carpenter \u2013 are concurrently enrolled students from Montezuma-Cortez and Dolores high schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evaluators from CU Boulder were very impressed with the rover\u2019s design and programming,\u201d Watters said of Marvin the Martian.<\/p>\n

Multiple schools competed at the event, including Front Range, Arapahoe, School of Mines, Colorado State University and Colorado Mesa University.<\/p>\n

Watters said it was PCC\u2019s first time participating in the event, and they were thrilled to walk away with awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really cool, and we were so excited about it,\u201d Watters said. \u201cIt was a really cool accomplishment for these students here. We don\u2019t have the resources that some of those big four-year schools have, and we were able to hold our own in that challenge and they had a lot of fun. They want to come back again next year, and they\u2019re recruiting other students to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enrollment is now open for students who wish to participate next year, and students have to be registered in at least one PCC class to take part in the robotics course.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter which class it is,\u201d Watters said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only requirement. I would love anyone who\u2019s interested in participating to be part of it. You don\u2019t have to be an engineer, you don\u2019t have to know what you\u2019re doing to start. That\u2019s the best way to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

two teams to the competition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,29,572],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-pueblo-community-college"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80273,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28012\/revisions\/80273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28012"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}