Mercer Students Excel at Trinity College

During the last weekend in March students from Mercer High School and Elementary School, in conjunction with Westminster College, completed the 11th annual Trinity College Fire Fighting Robot competition. This is the fourth year students from our school have traveled with Mr. Dave Shaffer and his college students to Connecticut to compete in this international robotics competition.

The Trinity College International Robot Contest is an open, not-for-profit event that requires invention of autonomous, socially relevant robots. The contests promote creativity, teamwork, the understanding and application of STEM subjects and the sharing of ideas. Teams are from all over the world including: Indonesia, China, Israel, and the US to name a few.

Senior Ben Shaffer took home the award for smallest robot.

The competition has many divisions and in their division, senior Anna Garner and freshman Kate Shaffer placed 1st in presentation and 2nd in robot. But more impressively, the duo won the BURP Award. According to the website: The BURP Award is the highest honor that a fire fighting robot team can earn. The relative ranking of the robots within their respective division determines their BURP score. The BURP score is based on 50% of the robot performance in the arena, 25% on the Olympiad score, and 25% on the poster score.