Coming to Arlington for the first time since its foundation 13 years ago, the G.E.A.R. robotics competition was held at UTA on Saturday in the Engineering building, Nedderman Hall.

G.E.A.R. is an acronym which stands for "Getting Excited About Robots", and is a competition for students ages 9-14 that exposes them to the world of robotics and provide them with opportunities to grow their problem solving skills and team working abilities.

Hosted by the Arlington Public Library, Library Administrator Yoko Matsumoto said, "There was a lot of learning taking place and it's a good way to get kids involved."

Each of the 16 teams that entered consisted of groups of two to three members. They had a set of objectives to finish before the allotted time of one minute and thirty seconds was completed.

Some of the objectives required the robots to pick up ping pong balls and others required them to push PVC pipes through holes.

Teams would often be seen working steadily through their breaks to reconfigure their robots and make the necessary changes that would enhance its abilities.

Helping out a few of the participants, some of the UTA Engineering students volunteered their time to talk with the students about their projects and provided them with expertise on how they can better improve their bots in the future.

Some of the different awards given out were based on how well teams worked together and on essays submitted, as well as the team's overall placement in the competition.

This was the last G.E.A.R. Robotics event for the summer, but according to the competition's website, there will be more dates announced in the future.