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With a list of approved materials, a box of provided supplies and a local grandpa's tools, students from St. Xavier found themselves in a quandary.

Whose idea would most likely send them and their robot to the national Boosting Engineering and Science and Technology Competition on Dec. 8 at Auburn University?

"The biggest challenge is probably making it so everyone's ideas are heard," said student and Fairfield resident Dave Weickert, 17.

But after much compromise and several different test models, the team of 10 boys created a winner.

"The most exciting is just being able to apply our love of building into the competition — being able to compete and show our skills off," Weickert said.

The team attended the Oct. 2 University of Cincinnati Bearcat BEST Tournament with the theme 2021, a Robot Odyssey. Their task was to design a robot that could traverse terrains of varying grades and angles and then pick up, store and dump multiple items of various shapes and sizes.

The team earned second-place with its design, earning them a place at nationals.

Co-chairman senior Alex Beigh of Liberty Twp. said it took his team three months to develop its model, but after the competition at the UC, the team went back to work making it better.

He said the team pulled ideas from other teams, analyzing what worked best. Since the competition, the team has changed its claw design to be able to hold two things at once and made its 20-pound machine five pounds lighter while adding a second motor.

"We wanted to make it better so we have a better chance at winning," Beigh said.

Beigh and Weickert teamed up on the dump truck section of the robot, which is activated by bashing the machine into a hard surface, causing a string to pull a release switch.

Beigh said the biggest challenge for him was making everyone feel their design idea was valued.

"Most of them are super smart, so its hard to convince them their idea isn't perfect," he said. "It's been cool to see how you got to work together to actually get stuff done. I think it's interesting to see how working on a real project is a lot more difficult than it seems."

Beigh said most people don't understand robotics, but once they see the diverse group of students involved and the intense competition between teams, they get interested in the process.

David Campbell of Butler Tech said that is the goal of robotics teams — to get students interested in science and mathematics.

"It's really to meet the shortfall of the high tech, high energy kids coming out of the educational system," Campbell said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5067 or lhilty@coxohio.com.