Valley View Middle students engineer their way to a robotics competition award

The Valley View Middle School robotics team, Technically Falcons, finished a successful season and won an award at the Minnesota First Tech Challenge qualifier competition held at Burnsville High School on Jan. 13. The team finished in eighth place out of 27 teams.  

The Technically Falcons team won the Promote award, given to the team that creates the most compelling public service announcement video to change culture and celebrate science, technology, engineering and math. The team’s video answered the prompt: The best thing about First Tech Challenge is…

The team’s robot picked up items and placed them on a board using a claw arm to score points during competition. It also has a paper airplane launcher that scored additional points for landing in a specific scoring area. The team won four of its six matches with a high score of 80 points. 

Olson Middle School’s Cougar Robotics Collective team also competed, finishing in 25th place.