Six Portland area robotics teams are ready for national championships in St. Louis after they won their divisions during the weekend's regional competition.

The West Super-Regional Championships took place March 27 to 29 in Oakland, Calif. The winners of the Championships are teams from Washington County 4H, Lake Oswego High School, Westview High School and Stoller Middle School.

CD Venkatesh, coach of Team AOOFA of Washington County, won the Compass Award. This award is provided to a coach in the 12-state western region. Teams from thirteen Oregon middle and high school robotics were among the 72 from a dozen states competing for spots in the FIRST Tech Challenge regional contests.

The competition included 10-member teams with students in grades eight through 12 and these students design and program robots with the help of a robotics kit called Tetrix. The robots tried to win on a 12-by-12-foot playing field. During the first 30 seconds, the robots should work completely without human intervention. According to experts, for next 120 seconds members of team can assist the robots by sending commands with the help of wireless connections.

In the championship, teams competed in alliances with each alliance trying to place balls in tubes of various heights. The Oregon Robotics Tournament & Outreach Program helped to arrange the local and regional competition with an aim to send teams to the western contests.

The Oregon teams are going to compete on April 22 to 25 in the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in St. Louis. At the time of the western regional contest, Washington County's 4H team Batteries in Black was named second place in the Inspire Award. This award is provided to the team that has performed well in all judging categories and was selected as a model FIRST Tech Challenge team.