History of Gunter Robotics

There and Back Again.

Gunter Robotics is a student-run organization, with sponsors and willing teachers that offer up their two cents, for the purpose of building robots based on a set of guidelines to participate in a competition, dubbed only as “The Games”. The Games are “designed to teach teamwork, problem solving, project management, and pride in task completion within the constraints of a short time period and limited physical resources.”

In the inaugural 1993 year, Robotics was solely known for the NT BEST competition, a competition between 13 schools in the area, and Gunter competed for first place in that beginning year along with all subsequent years. Between the years of 1994, which was the second year of competition, and 1998, Gunter managed to place first in either the NT BEST competition, the Game competition, the State-level competition, or a mix of all three. In recent years, home-schoolers have become a force to be reckoned with against Gunter.

Being an anyone-can-join organization, winning so often with a student-minded team of builders, publicists, and just straight spirit rallyists, is actually an amazing thing. Throughout the years, however, Gunter wasn’t just competing and winning, but they also took great pride in teaching other schools how to excel, and further enhanced the competition which would eventually grow into more for the sport.

In 1995, the competition evolved with the introduction of a state level of competition that took place at Texas A&M University, and the Gunter Robotics team brought home the winning trophy..With the win, Gunter Robotics was invited to Austin to meet with former President George W. Bush to receive the 1995 Governor’s Award. Also in 95’, Jerry Junkins, CEO  and President of TI (Texas Instruments), personally presented students with a check to cover Robotics expenses for the year.

Sometime after the 1997 competition, Johnny 5, Gunter’s Robot of the Year, was restored by BEST and used as a promotion for Robotics until at least 2003, if not longer.

For over 11 years, all robot drivers for Gunter were male; that is until 2001 when Gunter Tigers Robotics had its first female driver, Alaina Holloway.

For over 20 years, Gunter has competed in a plethora of different competitions with their respective robots and received various prestigious awards over this course of time, while still evolving with each task or hurdle to accomplish their goals. And so, 20 years after the beginning of NT BEST, Gunter competed in the 2013 Warp XX games for the 20th Anniversary of BEST.

After all, what’s the point in a competition if you don’t learn anything.

Written by:

Haegan Jones and…