About 700 elementary, middle and high school students from schools across California will show off their skills in robotics and programming this Saturday, May 18 at the 2019 C-STEM Center RoboPlay Challenge Competition. The competition runs all day in the ARC Pavilion on the UC Davis campus and at University High School in Irvine.

For the students, RoboPlay Day caps a year of classes developed by the Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education, or C-STEM, at UC Davis. The C-STEM curriculum developed by Professor Harry Cheng, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, uses robots to teach algebra, mathematics and programming. 

This year, 150 school teams will take part at UC Davis and Irvine. 

The theme of this year’s RoboPlay competition is “Racing and Automotive.” Teams will also show videos they have produced for the RoboPlay Video Competition, which encourages students to test their creativity in writing, editing and video production with programmable robots. 

“The C-STEM curriculum is now in use in schools across the country. It is particularly effective in reaching students who have tuned out of conventional math teaching and in closing the ‘achievement gap,’” according to Cheng, who founded and directs the C-STEM Center. 

All events are free and open to the public. More information is available on the RoboPlay Challenge website.  

RoboPlay Competition Student Information Video