MESQUITE – Students from 19 area middle and high schools put the finishing touches on their robots Saturday at Town East Mall.

MILTON HINNANT/DMN

Ann Duong, 16, a junior at Berkner High School, makes some adjustments to her team's robotic vehicle as they practice at Town East Mall for the November competition.

The annual BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) Robotics Competition is designed to spark interest in engineering, science, technology and math through robot-design competitions.

Nathan Thames, an eighth-grader at Cain Middle School in Rockwall, said 11 students from his school participated in the local event.

"This is mall day, where we come out to the hub and test out our designs," Nathan said.

Teams were given their design objective four weeks ago and spent Saturday testing those designs.

Nathan said this year's challenge was not only to build a robot, but to try to get the robot to assemble an airplane within a three-minute period.

"Each year it gets a little but more challenging," he said.

Bill Rock, a processing engineer at Raytheon and member of the BEST coordinating team, said many volunteers at the event are engineers from local companies.

"It's important to get younger people involved in engineering, especially since they're so interested in it," Mr. Rock said.

BEST Robotics Inc. is a nonprofit organization that started in Dallas in 1993. Today, the group has more than 10,000 students from about 700 middle and high schools participating each fall.

Tony Schneemann of Heath, an area engineer, served as an adviser to students from Cain Middle School. His son Anthony Schneemann is a member of the team.

"You can definitely see the potential these students have and it's important to nurture that talent," Mr. Schneemann said, "but it's all the kids' designs."

A statewide competition will be in early November at the University of North Texas in Denton.

Nathan said he can't wait to compete against other teams.

"It's cool because we learn how to build and how to work together as a team but also have some fun."