4-H students battled with codes and drones, on the ground and in the air, to see who would be called “Ruler of the Earth and Sky.”

The second annual Game of Drones, a collaboration between N.C. A&T Cooperative Extension’s 4-H STEM program and Fayetteville-based STEM learning organization STEMerald City, LLC, took place April 27 in Moore Gym.

“STEM is changing so quickly and coding is a part of so many different careers,” said Misty Blue-Terry, Ph.D., Assistant Extension Administrator for Youth, Families and Communities area. “Right now, we’re really preparing young people for careers that don’t exist, but we know that coding is really important to whatever those careers are. We think that any kind of way that we can introduce coding at a young age will be beneficial to the students and help them be prepared.”

Six middle school and five high school 4-H teams across the state took part in the competition, with 55 total registered students. On opposite sides of the gymnasium, each team, tooled with laptops, aerial and rolling drones, programming sensors, and months of training, was given multiple mission scenarios that would utilize either aerial or rolling drone technology. Working on a digital 10x9 grid, the students and coaches worked together to interpret the mission and type real-time coding that would signal the drone to move on the grid and to a precise location.

Jeffries Epps, CEO of education partner STEMerald City, LLC who hosted the event, said the objective was to teach students how to think “computationally.”

“This competition, even though it involves robots that fly and roll on the ground, it’s quintessentially about thinking,” said Epps. “If you can make it move autonomously with code, whether it flies or rolls, it’s a drone.”

Scoring for the competition was based not only on how close the drones landed on their target, but how well the teams interpreted the mission, Epps said.

“The key is to thoroughly read that mission,” said Epps. “If they miss one word or one part of the mission, then the robot’s not going to complete it and their points are going to be deducted.”

Union County 4-H won first place in both the middle and high school competitions, taking home a gold medal and an LED globe.