Hayes Middle School student Braelyn Middleton (left) demonstrates a drone for a judge at the Regional Aerial Drones Competition Championship: Dragonfly in Fairmont. The Hayes Middle drone team won the Inspire Award at the May 20-22 multistate competition.
Hayes Middle School students (from left) Lillian Roberts, Lilly Farry and Evie Brennan display the Inspire Award the St. Albans school’s drone team won in Fairmont earlier this month.
Hayes Middle School student Braelyn Middleton (left) demonstrates a drone for a judge at the Regional Aerial Drones Competition Championship: Dragonfly in Fairmont. The Hayes Middle drone team won the Inspire Award at the May 20-22 multistate competition.
Hayes Middle School students (from left) Lillian Roberts, Lilly Farry and Evie Brennan display the Inspire Award the St. Albans school’s drone team won in Fairmont earlier this month.
Students from six Kanawha County schools participated in the Regional Aerial Drone Competition Championship: Dragonfly at Fairmont State University in Fairmont May 20 through May 22.
Four of the county teams brought home awards and accolades from the multistate competition:
The Winged Warriors team from Riverside High School won the Flight Operations Award
The Bandits team from Riverside High School won the Autonomous Flight Championship
The East Bank Middle School team won the Performance Award and were second place tournament finalists
The Robo BeeGees from Hayes Middle School won the Inspire Award.
The drone teams competing from Kanawha County were from South Charleston High School, Riverside High School, Andrew Jackson Middle School, East Bank Middle School, DuPont Middle School, and Hayes Middle School.
Altogether, 62 middle and high school teams from nine states and Washington, D.C., participated in the event at the Falcon Center on the FSU campus. The tournament champions were the Lincoln County High School drone squad and the West Virginia Mountain-Arts team from Griffithsville. Along with the half-dozen Kanawha County schools and the tournament champions, other state teams that were on the participation roster included the Soaring Stallions from South Middle School in Morgantown, the Kamikaze Kaptains from the Elkview Explorers 4-H Club in Elkview, the Techno Mothmen/Friends of The Techno Mothmen from St. Albans, Guyan Valley Middle School, Huntington High School, Lewis County High School, Brooke High School, and Clay Middle School.
The NASA Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont produced the competition, which was hosted by the West Virginia Robotics Alliance. San Diego-based Robolink created the drones that were used in the tournament.
The drone crews also learned about NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission during the competition. Set to launch in June 2027, the Dragonfly spacecraft will undertake a journey to reach Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, in 2034. The Dragonfly robotic rotorcraft will also be programmed to perform a gravity assist flyby of Venus and three passes by Earth to gain additional velocity during its flight. Upon reaching Titan, the spacecraft will assess the moon’s microbial habitability and study its prebiotic chemistry at various locations through controlled flights and vertical takeoffs and landings.
