This past Saturday (August 24) the Bloomsburg Children’s Museum held “Battle in the Burg,” an annual combat robot tournament. This year’s competition saw 45 robots entered in the one- and three-pound divisions. Robot teams came into Bloomsburg from six states. 230 spectators attended the event.
This is the fourth year the Museum has hosted the event. “It’s one of our favorite events of the year,” Ginny Weibel, Director of the museum said. “It’s amazing to see the engineering that goes into each robot design.” The Museum has a team comprised of students from middle school – college. “Our students did very well this year,” Weibel said. “We came away with a 2nd, 5th, 6th and a pair of 17th places in a very competitive field.”
The Bloomsburg YMCA donated the use of their gym for the event. Weibel said the event grew too large to be held at the Museum any longer. “When we first started we only had about 20 robots entered and now we’ve more than doubled that.”
Each two-minute match had Ant Weight (one-pound) or Beetle Weight (three-pound) robots fight it out with the goal of teach team being: destroy the other. The specially reinforced arena used in the competition came from Kirk Marshall (Bloomsburg High School), who recently fabricated it for use in his tournament “Rage in the Cage” which occurs every spring.
The event is sponsored by Dyco Inc. , The PPL Foundation, Sekisui Kydex, and Fingertech Robotics.
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