GCISD’s Aero 404 team, consisting of engineering students from Colleyville Heritage and Grapevine high schools in the district’s Career and Technical Education program, will compete with approximately 14 teams from across the nation in the Advanced Vertical Robotics (AVR) Championships. The event will be held Saturday, December 7, at the Henry B. Tippie National Aviation Education Center in Dallas.
The team, whose name is a pun on the “404 not found” error when a server cannot connect to its source, advanced to nationals by placing third at a qualifying event held November 15. At an earlier qualifier, they won the “Judges Award” presented to the team that stands out for exceptional attitude, communication, teamwork and community outreach.
The mission at nationals, where they will be competing against teams from Michigan, New York, Virginia and other states as well as Texas, will be to score the most points by maneuvering two drones and a rover in recovery efforts through a mock course that replicates the aftermath of a massive hurricane in Florida that damaged railways, bridges and power lines.
“We have four components,” junior Andrew Moon said. “We have the main drone, which acts like a search helicopter; the Spheros, which are people; a rover, which maneuvers through the landscape; and a smaller drone, which scouts the area.”
Moon added, “Our mission is to load the Spheros onto containers and transport them to another location where they do missions. Once they are done, we transport them back. We get points on completing the mission and not crashing.”
Team Aero also enlisted the help of Glenhope Elementary fifth grade students in their mission by having them create the designs on the Spheros and rover.
AVR events, sponsored by Bell Helicopter, BNSF Railway, Microsoft and Perot Company Hillwood, among others, are intended for the students to utilize in a real-world context the engineering skills learned in class.
Junior Hailey Warzecha, a third year engineering student in the CTE program, is thrilled to be going to nationals.
“This is my third year and this is the farthest we’ve ever advanced,” Warzecha stated.
Teacher Anya McCarthy, who is in her second year as coach for Aero 404, added that most team members are part of CTE’s aerospace class, Robotics I and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Practicum, but that any student in engineering can join Aero 404.
In addition to showcasing their engineering skills during the competition, the team will also earn points for their presentation to judges, where they speak about their design approach and process; engineering skills used; strategy; lessons learned; and more.
Watch a video describing the competition and learn more about GCISD’s CTE program here. A scholarship and partnership campaign is currently underway for the CTE program.
Good luck to Aero 404 at the national championship!
Story Update
Aero 404 was awarded the Exemplary Team Award at the national championship. The award honors the team that best demonstrates professionalism, passion, and respect to both fellow competitors and event staff.