What is BEST Robotics?

BEST stands for "Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology". The competition occurs annually at locally organized hub sites throughout the country. This will be NDSU's 3rd year as a hub site.

There are two parallel competitions associated with the BEST program -- the robotics competition and the BEST Award. For the robotics competition, each participating school is provided an identical kit of equipment and parts, a set of game rules, and given six weeks to design, build, and test a Radio Controlled robot that outperforms other robots. Engineers, University faculty members, and other technical professionals from local industry serve as team mentors, advising and guiding students throughout the design and construction of their robot; however, students perform all of the work.

In addition to the robotics competition, students compete for the BEST Award, which is presented to the team that best embodies the concept of "Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology". The 5 elements of the BEST Award include:

• project engineering notebook
• oral presentation
• table display
• spirit and sportsmanship
• robot performance

The BEST Award competition is optional for schools.

The competition is free for schools to participate; however, schools may incur travel-related expenses to come to Fargo for the events. In addition, since NDSU owns the kits of parts to build the robots, we essentially loan them to the schools for the six-week competition. We require each school to submit a $200 deposit. This deposit will be refunded at the end of the competition when the kit of parts is returned to NDSU.