Students take to the air at HESTEC

EDINBURG — The unmanned aerial vehicle swerved through some posts and haphazardly glided through other obstacles before it careened into the University of Texas-Pan American field house Thursday.

Feet away, face and shoulders tight with tension, the sixth-grade pilot lowered his iPad and slowly stepped away, finishing his middle school’s run in the final round of a flying robotics competition at the university’s 10th annual Hispanic Engineering, Science and Technology week.

“It’s harder than it looks. We didn’t even last seven seconds,” said Felix Ledesma, 12, from Ann Richards Middle School in La Joya. “I’ve played flying games in Corpus Christi, so I thought that would help a bit.”

Though he wouldn’t be piloting his school’s drone in the final round, Ledesma bounced ideas off his peers in order to boost their scores in the 51-team competition.

“It’d be great if the screen works better this time,” he said. Last time, “it just started changing, and I couldn’t see anything. And that obstacle course isn’t easy!”

Whether competitors directed their Parrot Pr Drones via iPad or laptop computer, they had to master altitude, depth perception, speed and trajectory while navigating a course of hula hoops, foam noodles and zigzagging poles.

There was a point behind the fun, said Staff Sgt. Rene Ochoa of the U.S. Air Force, which sponsored the event.

“This has been an awesome opportunity to showcase Air Force technology and our commitment to advanced engineering,” he said. “We actually bridge that gap from what (students) see as fiction and on TV to what’s real.

“They’re suddenly making a connection that they know the Air Force lives this ‘fiction’ every day.”

Regardless if these adolescents grow up to pilot these unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for the government — which has used them along the U.S.-Mexican border and in the Middle East conflicts – Ochoa said he simply hoped they put their creativity and adaptability to good use.

And he commended the mastery of the four propeller drones by students like sixth-grader Marielle Hicban, whose St. Philip Neri Oratory School team from Pharr stood at second place at halftime.

“It’s difficult to get used to the controls at first,” the 11-year-old said. “And sometimes you don’t know (whether) to look at the machine, the screen, backwards or forwards.

“But I like that people here are very competitive. It keeps us trying our hardest to get used to the controls fast to get the most points,” she said. “And we have a lot of points.”

Roma Middle School eventually took first place, while Cummings Middle School from Brownsville and A.P. Solis Middle School in Donna snagged second and third place, respectively.

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4472.