BROCKTON, Mass. —
A group of students at Brockton High School are putting their coding skills to the test.
The high school students make up multiple “Empower Yourself Drone” robotics teams.
They’ve been meeting every Saturday since October. The STEM-Ed Aero Robotics Competition regionals competition is set to be held in May at New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College.
The students are coding and constructing autonomous drones for the competition, where they’ll be given GPS waypoints for their drones to fly to before being grilled by military expert judges.
Once they get their waypoints on competition day, they’ll have 6 minutes to program the drones’ code to follow them and then three minutes to get their drones off the ground.
Nobody will be manually controlling the drones. It’s all meant to be pre-coded for automated flying.
Students say they hope being a part of the program inspires others to do the same.