BHS seniors bring home 3rd place at state robotics contest

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Seth Close, left, and Ethan Murphy are pictured at the Ohio SkillsUSA State Finals. (BCS PHOTO)

A pair of Bellefontaine High School seniors showcased their skills at a recent state competition, scoring a a 93 percent, which landed them in third place.

Seth Close and Ethan Murphy competed in Robotics and Automation Technology in the Ohio SkillsUSA State Finals at the Columbus Convention Center. Career centers and high schools brought industrial 6 axis robots from FANUC, Yaskawa, and Universal robots. Fifteen teams from all over Ohio competed on the five challenges.

The contest took almost four hours to show the judges various skills which included flow charts, sketching work cells, multiple materials handling jobs, configuring inputs and outputs (stack light), file manipulation, data registers, and other programming challenges.

They were also awarded certificates from Universal Technical Institute ($2,000) and Lincoln Tech Indianapolis ($2,500) to offset their tuition if they so choose.

BHS CTE Engineering extended congratulations to Seth and Ethan on their strong performance at the state level in their first-ever robotics competition. Both students completed their FANUC and Yaskawa Motoman industry credentials this year as well.

Shawn Miller, Travis Hunsicker and Aaron Garver are the STEM, Industrial Technology and Engineering instructors at BHS.