A local youth robotics club has placed highly in recent competitions. Tacobotics is a seven-member 4H team from Knoxville and the surrounding area that recently took part in the FIRST Tech Challenge, where clubs build robots and compete in a variety of tasks. Member Caleb Book says this is completely student-run.

“I’ve had friends who were on robotics teams, and it’s always something I’ve known I’ve wanted to do. It never worked out for me to be on a team until this year. This year, all the teams I tried joining decided they were going to be done, so we started our own team.”

The team is ranked 12th out of 140 similar teams in Iowa and 185th out of over 4,700 globally. They’re also one of 28 teams in Iowa to advance to the state championships. Hear more from team members on an upcoming In Depth.