A team of four middle-schoolers from southeast Michigan is winning awards for a robot designed to fix potholes.
Berkley School District spokeswoman Jessica Stilger tells the Oakland Press (http://bit.ly/2tmunne ) that Team Equalizer won first place in May at the State Robofest contest in Lawrence Technological University.
The team went on to win fourth place this month at the World Robofest competition in Florida.
The team is made up of Norup Middle School seventh-graders Max Fagenson and Izzy Jansen, and eighth-graders Ellie Haenick and Max Rontal.
Silger says the students were assigned to solve real-world problems with a robot. The students' research included studying injury and mortality rates of highway workers who fix crumbling roads.
A national transportation research group ranks Michigan's roads as fourth worst in the nation.