Fort Worth Stock Show and STEM Rodeo Demonstrations

At the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, you expect to see cowboys fighting cattle. You probably don’t expect to see 4-H students arguing with robots.

“This is the Fort Worth Stock Show Agrobot Competition,” Derrick Bruton, 4-H-STEM State Specialist. “Invite some non-traditional kids to livestock shows who may have never been here before.”

A room at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is an arena for agricultural engineering students, and the competition is their rodeo.

“This year it’s going to be about space farming, which is far from it,” Bruton said, explaining why the students programmed their robots. “The future of agriculture will be high tech, and that’s the audience we really want to introduce to that.”

“We are super siblings,” said Emma Belshan, smiling between her older brother Carter and younger sister Clara. The trio from Brock, located outside of Weatherford, wore raincoats as they worked on programming their Alpha robot to perform the tasks they needed to complete.

“Come on, Alpha, you got it,” Carter said as he walked over to the competition table, cradling their robot. “We delivered this farm module to the square. It took us a long time and only gave us 50 points, so we chose the 500 points route!”

“I see the next generation of engineers, farmers and farmers,” said Eleanor Nave. Nave grew up on the 4-H STEM robotics team and now works at Lockheed Martin. “You don’t have to choose farming or technology, you can really mix them up and explore all your passions at the same time.”

“Let’s go, it’s easy,” Clara said as the Super Siblings began their first competition. “Yeah, we figured it out,” Emma cheered.

Reaching the finals, the Super Siblings won the junior division on Friday night.