Welcome to Botball!
Get ready for a high-tech, high-energy approach to education! The Botball Educational Robotics Program integrates science, technology, engineering, and math with robotics to keep your students on the cutting edge of technology!
The Professional Development Workshop
The Botball Program begins with a 2-day professional development workshop where educators and team leaders learn about current robotics technology and how to implement it into their classroom or community. Through the course of the workshop, participants receive all the information about the current Botball game and the reusable robotics kit and components - They even construct a working demo bot!
The Building Period and Tournament
Following the workshop, students are given about seven weeks to design, build and program a team of mobile, autonomous robots as well as document the engineering process online. Participants compete against each other on a 4’ x 8’ playing field in a fast paced, non-destructive regional tournament. The robots are student built and programmed to maneuver on the game board without the need for remote control.
Botball events are currently held in 14 regions across the nation as well as 3 international events in the Middle East:
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Greater DC
- Greater St. Louis
- Hawaii
- Midwest
- New England
- New York/New Jersey
- Northern California
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Southern California
- Texas
- Qatar
- Kuwait
- United Arab Emirates
The Global Conference on Educational Robotics™
The learning doesn’t end after the regional tournaments. Each year students, teachers, robotics enthusiasts, and professionals from across the world gather for the annual Global Conference on Educational Robotics. Teachers and students lead the way in sharing ideas from curriculum integration to technical aspects of robotics by presenting papers during breakout sessions.
Highlights of the conference include nationally recognized professionals from organizations such as NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory giving fascinating presentations on their topics of expertise. Of course the most anticipated events are the International Botball Tournament, the Beyond Botball Tournament (Botball for grown-up kids!), and the Autonomous Robotics Showcase.
Botball is Open-Ended
Like many of life’s challenges, the Botball Program presents an open-ended problem with a variety of solutions. The many different scoring methods offer teams challenges at different levels - requiring them to make decisions about strategy, design, and construction. This gives teams experience in evaluating options and working towards a solution.
Many teams find that keeping with the KISS philosophy of “keep it simple stupid” is often the best solution for a complex problem.
Where is the Driver?
There is no driver! Botball robots are completely autonomous and rely on their computer programming to start, stop, and maneuver on the game board. Each robot uses sensors to detect changes in light, sound, distance, and color. The robot’s actions are based on the feedback from the sensors combined with the computer programming written and implemented by the students in advance.
Why Robots?
In order for students to apply the subjects they learn in school, they must be able to use those subjects in a way that is meaningful. By designing, building, programming, and documenting robots, students use science, engineering, technology, math, and writing skills in a hands-on project that reinforces their learning.