Sixth grade RCS Engineering member Kendrick Duncan maneuvers the team’s robot during practice at Monday’s Community Night. Photo by Kellie Singleton.

The RCS Engineering team is gearing up for their first competition of the year and they gave the large crowd gathered at Monday’s Community Night a preview of what judges will be seeing this weekend.

The competition is sponsored by BEST Robotics, Inc., which is a non-profit and volunteer-based organization whose purpose is to get middle and high school students interested in the STEM-related fields.

RCS Engineering sponsor Lee Brownell said the competition is set up as a business competition, and RCS Engineering actually represents themselves as a legitimate corporation with different departments, such as marketing, research and design and public relations.

“RCS Engineering is actually considered a ‘business’ that has been given a problem by BEST Robotics, Inc., and RCS Engineering will be competing against other engineering and robotics teams from other schools to win a ‘contract’ for the product they are expected to build,” Brownell said.

He said this year’s problem for the competition was to build a robot that would assist in assembling two wind turbines, one large and one small.

“Sustainable clean energy is a big topic right now, so that’s what this competition is focusing on,” Brownell said.

“Our students not only had to build the robot, but they also have to be able to navigate through a course that simulates the real terrain they would be building these wind turbines on.

“They’ve been given certain challenges, such as navigating through an endangered species habitat (simulated by PVC pipe) without disturbing them, raising a gate to go across a bridge, acquiring a weight limit permit to cross the bridge (by having the robot push a button), crossing the bridge, and then assembling the wind turbines.”

But building the robot and successfully navigating it through the course and all the obstacles isn’t the only component to the competition.

“Since it’s a business competition, we not only have to build our product, but we have to sell the product as well,” he said.

“Our marketing team will present their pitch to a panel of four judges. We’ll also have a trade show booth that showcases our product and our company’s accomplishments, an engineering notebook including CAD designs, and a website.”

(The RCS Engineering team’s commercial can be accessed at http://youtu.be/qx9p-pe4gfE.)

The RCS Engineering team is part of the Northwest Alabama BEST Hub, which includes 24 teams that the group will be competing against.

The BEST award will go to the corporation with the total package: transportation and assembly performance (game scoring), innovation and robustness of the vehicle, engineering approach and documentation (notebook), marketing and presentation of the project, environmental stewardship, and spirit and sportsmanship during the competition.

RMS teacher Mark Keeton, who also helps with the RCS Engineering team, said what the students have accomplished so far this semester has been amazing to see.

“You should be proud of these students,” Keeton told parents and community members Monday night.

“What they’ve done is unreal, and I continue to be blown away by it.”

The competition will take place this Saturday, Nov. 1, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the gym on the Muscle Shoals campus of Northwest-Shoals Community College.

If RCS Engineering places high enough, they will advance to the South’s BEST Regional Championship at Auburn University Dec. 6-7.