Lockheed Martin is hosting their annual robotics competition in next month during National Engineers Week.
The competition offers students the opportunity to build a robot with their school team and take it through a series of challenges.
“Engineers present a design challenge to students. The students learn how to program and design attachments to their vehicle to make a ‘robot’ to accomplish the task,” physics teacher Michael Undieme said.
Twenty-seven Boone students are competing, only two of which are female.
“There is a shortage of women in the engineering field,” senior Melody Halbert said. “Learning to work with a group of all guys will be good experience for me because I am going to run into that a lot.”
For the competition, students have to construct a robot that can complete the mission of escaping multiple rooms before the other teams’ robots.
Lockheed Martin engineers come to campus twice a week to assist the students, but never help them build the robot. Some students are using this as an opportunity to learn more about the career.
“The engineers also answer questions about majoring in engineering, different types of engineering, or any other general questions the students might have,” Undieme said.
The competition can give students experience they will need later in life if they choose to pursue a career in engineering. They will gain experience working with their peers, acquire knowledge from professional engineers and learn techniques that will later assist them in the field.
“I want to pursue an engineering degree,” Halbert said. “It will be cool to build and code a robot, and I think this will help me get my foot in the door.”