Results from recent Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation Aerial Drone Tournament at Nixa, Missouri

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Written by: SFC (Ret.) Robert Hodapp

NIXA, MO — Nixa High School Army JROTC from Nixa, Missouri, hosted its first Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation Aerial Drone Tournament on February 18, 2023. This competition consisted of 12 JROTC Drone teams from Nixa, SRTC, Camdenton, Booneville, and Wichita, Kansas. This competition was in conjunction with multiple JROTC programs receiving Department of Defense grants in order to receive drones and competition field kits in order to get JROTC students more involved in technology-based career skills. The competition for the 2022-23 season is called “Blackout”. This means that teams and alliances must work together to effectively communicate and guide the piloted drone onto landing sites that are blocked from the pilot’s view in order to score as many points as possible to win the match. 

The Tournament Champions for this event were:

• 2319 A  Screamin’ Eagles – Nixa
• 2022 B Camdenton Lakers 2 – Camdenton

Both Teams are scheduled to compete at the National Aerial Drone Championship in Flowood, Mississippi on April 21 & 22. You can learn more at the following link: Aerial Drone Competition Championship: Opportunity in Mississippi (external link)

The Excellence award went to:

• 2022 B Camdenton Lakers 2 – Camdenton

The Autonomous Flight Champion went to:

• 2319 A Screamin’ Eagles – Nixa (Score: 49) 
  • Ranked 13th out of 194 teams Nationwide
  • Ranked 3rd out of 61 JROTC teams

The competition consists of two components. The first component is the Autonomous SKILLS event where teams have three 1-minute attempts to program their drone to complete a series of tasks without human interaction in order to score as many points as possible. Team scores are then posted on a Global Skills Standing list. The second component is a tournament-style competition where teams are randomly allianced in a series of qualifying matches to determine a win-loss ranking. In this component, students pilot the drones around to score points by moving colored balls and large white balls into 5 goal areas positioned throughout the game field. Alliances have two minutes to score as many points as possible. During the last 45 seconds of gameplay, alliances can then fly their drones through two colored keyholes and then attempt to land on one of the landing pads which are located behind a “blackout screen” requiring pilots to rely upon the hand/voice signals from their team observer. Effective communication is key to winning the tournament portion of the competition. After all qualifying matches have been completed, teams will choose an alliance partner based on their seed ranking from the qualifying matches. Alliance then go head-to-head in a single elimination bracket until the two remaining alliances face off in the Final round.