The team is coached by Ashley Moore, Brian Rosebrook and Molly East (not pictured). Pictured from L to R are: Derek Wells, Alexis Zabek, Siena Zabek, Nick Ferrucci, Aditi Gupta, Joey Vogel, Jonah Labovitz and Collin Hayes. Not pictured: Sadie Jauregui.

May 18. Cornelius Elementary School’s robotics team, the Cyber Trash Talkers, recently won the Judge’s Award at the 2016 Robofest Robotics Championship, held April 30 at UNC-Charlotte. The award is presented to the team that excelled in all aspects of the competition: robotics, teamwork and research project.

The theme for this year’s competition was “Trash Trek.” The students created a research project and presentation to show how they would improve trash collection and reduce waste at their school. The team’s project focused on plastic water bottle use and how to reduce waste by installing a refillable water bottle station at school.

The team also designed, built and programmed a Lego robot to complete various missions at the competition. The Cyber Trash Talkers competed against 58 other teams from elementary and middle schools from across the state. The team advanced to the Robofest by winning the first runner-up award at the CMS 2016 Robotics Championship on April 9.