By Susan Hiland
McNaughton Media
Winters High School earned the top spot with the highest score for the overall competition at the Travis Spark Challenge hosted by the Solano County Office of Education and Travis Air Force Base’s Phoenix Spark program last Friday.
Student teams from Golden Hills Community School, Will C. Wood (three teams), DeAnza (three teams), Buckingham Charter (two teams), Vacaville, Winters and Vanden high schools entered the competition where they were challenged to select one of three genuine issues that TAFB is currently trying to solve. The three
challenge prompts were to develop solutions for gate traffic flow, dining facility customer flow or flight line perimeter control.
The team solution and presentation incorporated a prototype for fingerprint checking at the TAFB gate stations so those with base access could pass through quickly.
The Will C. Wood “Wildcat Garage” team won in the challenge category for gate traffic flow solutions. DeAnza High School’s “Air Force Jr. ROTC DeAnza” team won the challenge category for flight line perimeter monitoring.
The Golden Hills Community School “Eagles” team took home the top award for the dining facility flow challenge category according to a press release.
The goals of the Travis Spark Challenge are to provide students with fun, interesting, and challenging real-world problems to solve; introduce a challenge that advances both the high school’s academic goals and Travis AFB’s mission; and to tap into a pool of innovators that can bring a novel solution and perspective to the issues being presented in the challenge.
Follow the Winters Robotics social media accounts for updates.
