Students learn life skills in robot competition at Mundelein High School

Danielle Horner was up past midnight engineering a secret weapon for her Lake Park High School team members before the VEX Robotics Competition early Saturday morning at Mundelein High School.

As more than 30 teams dialed in their competition robots, programmed to retrieve, stack and deposit plastic cubes into designated goals in a head-to-head arena battle, her team munched on the bucket of cookies she engineered.

"Why not?" she shrugged. "I like to build things. It's just a lot of fun to put things together."

The global robotics competition tasks students with designing, building and programming remotely controlled robots that could fit on a lunch tray to go one-on-one against a similar bot in a 12-foot-square arena. The two-minute matches require the robots to perform autonomously through programming, as well as remotely through the skills of a driver.

Students learn to use their physics, computer science and engineering lessons in competition. They first have to pass an inspection with their machine. Then they make any necessary adjustments and repairs before performing in the arena. Each team has six students.

It's more than a contest. It can spark a career interest, as it did with Jim James, a senior at Metea Valley High School, who says he may study computer science at the University of Illinois.

"In robotics, there is always something to improve," he said. "It's a continuous process."

Jacob Cornejo, a junior at Lake Park High School in Roselle, agrees and said he likes being part of a team working toward a goal.

"We're making a robot, which is pretty cool, I think," he said as he reached for a cookie.