More than 800 middle school and high school students from Hawai'i, the U.S. Mainland, China and Japan will descend on the Hawai'i Convention Center Dec. 4-6 for the Inaugural VEX Robotics Pan-Pacific Championship.

The team-based robotics competition, which is free and open to the public, will put students' engineering and high-tech skills to the test with robots created from the VEX Robotics Design System.

For several months, students, with guidance from teachers and mentors, have worked together to build robots designed to solve a set of challenges presented in the game.

During the competition, 83 student teams from 65 schools will square off in the game of "Elevation."

The object of the challenge is to place cubes into goals of various heights, or "elevations," and to "own" goals by having the highest cube in a given goal.

Ten teams from the VEX Pan-Pacific Championship will advance to the VEX Robotics World Championship taking place at the Dallas Convention Center and Arena April 30.