At the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo you expect to see cowboys wrangling cattle. You probably don’t expect to see 4-H students wrangling robots.
At the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, you expect to see cowboys wrangling cattle. You probably don't expect to see 4-H students wrangling robots.
"This is the Fort Worth Stock Show Agrobotics Competition," Derrick Bruton, a state 4-H Specialist-STEM. "To bring some non-traditional kids to the livestock shows that maybe may have never been here before."
A room inside the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is the arena for Agrobotics students, and the competition is their rodeo.
"This year it's about space farming, which is way out there," Bruton said, explaining what students programmed their robots to do. "The future of agriculture is going to be high tech and so this is the audience we really want to introduce to that."
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"We're the super siblings," Emma Belshan said smiling between her older brother Carter and younger sister Klara. The trio from Brock, located outside Weatherford, wore capes as they worked to program their robot "Alpha" for the challenges they had to complete.
"Come on, Alpha, you got this," Carter said walking over to the competition table cradling their robot. "We were delivering this farming module into the square. It took us a lot of time and only gave us 50 points, so we chose the 500-point route!"
"I see the next generation of engineers and agriculture and farmers," Eleanor Nave said. Nave grew up in a 4-H STEM robotics team and now works for Lockheed Martin. "You don't have to pick agriculture or technology, you can be able to really mix it and explore all of your passions at once."
"Let's go, that's easy," Klara said as the Super Siblings started their first competition. "Yes, we got that point," Emma cheered.
After making it to the finals, the Super Siblings went on to win the Junior Division Friday night.
