(ROSENBERG, Texas) – The state competition for the SkillsUSA Leadership and Skills Conference concluded Saturday, April 5, in Corpus Christi, and four students from Texas State Technical College’s Fort Bend County campus brought home gold medals.
Two of the four, Gilbert Delgado and Eduardo Gonzalez, competed in the Robotics: Urban Search and Rescue category as a team. Both are students in the Robotics and Industrial Controls Technology program, and they had to design a robot to navigate an obstacle course in order to remove “hazardous” materials.
“There was a moment during the competition where I didn’t have enough power to go up a ramp,” Delgado said. “But Eduardo was able to convey the need to turn the shape of the robot into a forklift, which let me go up. Communication was key.”
Since they earned gold, Delgado and Gonzalez are qualified to attend the national SkillsUSA competition this June in Atlanta, Georgia. They plan on improving where they can before then.
“We need to keep a better record of how we built the robot,” Gonzalez said. “We also plan on improving the robot before nationals.”
The other two students, Andrey Suvorov and Dylan Chudoba, also worked as a team to earn gold, this time in the Mechatronics category. The competition revolved around using a programmable logic controller to operate a simple robot.
“I think our general knowledge was really high when it came down to it,” Chudoba said. “I do want to improve on my communication skills before nationals, though.”
Suvorov agreed, citing the pressure of racing against the clock and against other teams as being really hard for him to adjust to. With that said, both encouraged other students to look into SkillsUSA in the coming year.
“I think it is a really good benchmark to see what you know and need to learn,” Suvorov said. “Plus it is nice to simply compete.”
For more information on the upcoming national SkillsUSA competition, go to nlsc.skillsusa.org.
For more information about TSTC, go to tstc.edu.
