GEAR Robotics

GEAR (Get Excited About Robotics) provides an exciting hands-on LEGO robotics challenge to elementary and middle school students at no participation fee, with the goal of increasing interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines while offering mentoring opportunities to engineering undergraduate students at Texas Tech University in an effort to improve their education and increase retention rates. 

The Texas Tech University GEAR tournament is held annually during the spring semester. It is open to students in grades K-8 from all schools/after-school clubs that are sponsored by a teacher or coach. Sign-up of individual students is not possible. The competition challenge changes annually, but a set of general rules remains the same every year. 

 GENERAL INFORMATION 

• Open to 4-H'ers in grades 3rd-8th grade and Clover Kids Kinder-2nd.

• Uses Lego Spike Prime EV3 or NXT robots. 

• Needs a laptop/tablet/iPad to program on.

• Teams of at least 3

• Two age groups:

  • Elementary Division--Kinder-5th grade

  • Middle School Division--6th-8th grade

• Playing Field is 4'x4'

• Known challenges are released for teams to practice and program prior to the contest. 

• The entire program is 6-8 weeks long. 

• Starts in January and ends in April.

• All programming is autonomous.

• All contests and practices are in Lubbock! No travel is required.