Hampton Township School District's Botball team won its first title in the Pennsylvania Regional Botball Championship last weekend at the township community center.

Eight teams from Pennsylvania and one from New York competed to see which students could build a totally autonomous robot that cleared the most crew members, hydroponic gardens and various plants off of their space station before it could be hit by a solar flare.

For people who weren't in attendance, that means the robots had to recognize orange and green puff balls and move them into a safety area marked on the board, within the two-minute time limit.

"It's so much more advanced than when we started," says Elizabeth Whitewolf, a Botball official from the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics.

The organization started 12 years ago when its founder, David Miller, held a robotics workshop and tournament. It's expanded since then to host tournaments all over the world.

This year, each team was given a robot kit with something like a Roomba vacuum, called an iRobot, as the base. They could use all the parts in the kit if they wanted, but no more. That way, the playing field is level and financial resources don't come into play.

"It puts the emphasis on engineering," Whitewolf says. "They have all the exact same resources."

Many of the teams strapped a Gameboy Advance SP onto their bots to control them with a simple programming code. They then used a variety of different techniques to make bots with sensors and arms that can capture and move all of the puff balls.

Vince Kuzniewski, a technology teacher at Hampton who sponsors the team, says his students spend anywhere from 200 to 300 hours in the seven weeks they're allowed to build.

"It's addictive, because you can always do better," Kuzniewski says.

While getting better is always a possibility, Hampton danced its robot away with first place overall in the competition, which is a combination of their other scores.

They got first place in seeding, second place in documentation, third place in double-elimination play and best in engineering, which is a judge's choice award, given for George Uehling's claw design and implementation.

Other members of the team are Anthony Sosso, Nathan Radebaugh, Alex Watts, Ben Swanson, Alex Lochner and Jeff Acquaviva.

Radebaugh, 17, a junior, was happy about this year's performance after not faring as well with last year's complex assignment.

"It's really exciting," he says.

With their victory, the team members are hoping to continue their success at the global conference in Norman, Okla., if they can get corporate sponsorship or some financial support. The conference is in early July.