Youth robotics teams from Sammamish and Bellevue won competitions at a worldwide science, technology, math, and engineering tournament in Houston on Saturday.
The championship, hosted by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), featured over 15,000 elementary, middle, and high school students from 43 countries.
The Sammamish team, Spartabots, was part of the winning alliance for the FIRST Robotics Competition, where students designed and programmed robots to perform tasks against their competitors in an 8-bit video game.
The Bellevue team, TechNova, was part of the winning alliance of the FIRST Tech Challenge where teams built robots from a reusable kit of parts and competed against other teams during game play.
This is the first time a Washington state team has won the tech challenge, according to TechNova, and it’s the second time a Pacific Northwest team has won world championships, according to the Spartabots.
Several other teams from Washington state also competed.
Cyberknights (Seattle), Jack in the Bot (Mill Creek), and SciBorgs (Pullman) all won their subdivision at the tournament. Subdivision finalists included CloverBots (Battle Ground) and Cedar Park Robotics (Bothell). S.K.I.D (Woodinville), Aquamarines (Redmond), SOTAbots (Tacoma), and Cyborg Ferrets (Anacortes) each won awards too.
See a full list of teams that won in each category.
