Battle Academy fourth-grade students Connor Mixon, Simeon Honeycutt, Aidan Cooley and Jaya Gardner, from left, watch their robot compete during a robotics showcase at TVA late Thursday morning.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free PressHunter Easterly was determined to make his robot climb a raised track to complete its mission of carrying a payload up and over a hump.
The new mission required a last-minute programming change after Hunter and his Signal Mountain Middle School robotics team realized a robotic part had been damaged on the way to the showcase at the TVA building in Chattanooga.
Carefully and patiently, the youngsters tried again and again to get the robot’s weight distributed just right for its revised task.
For a first set of Tennessee Valley Authority judges, the robot worked perfectly. For the second set, the robot kept lurching off track.
But judge Jeff Parsley, vice president of enterprise relations, still was impressed – especially with the youngsters’ can-do attitude.