High School Robotics Competitions

That would have to be a pretty well-funded high school. Colleges have robotics competitions. Our local high schools can't afford paper.

I'm guessing that the robots would be inexpensive, maybe "mouse-in-a-maze" type machines whose purpose would be to self-navigate a maze to find some "cheese" or such.

I was an electrical engineering major (hoping to work on robotics back in the 80's), but got into computers instead...

Check out First Robotics and any other competitions that use the Lego Mindstorm robots. They're kits (high end lego) with several varieties of sensors (light, proximity, etc) that can be programmed with a basic graphical programming language. The competitions are held nationally from grade school through high school age teams competing. The competition requires the robots to perform a series of tasks on a regulation board and the teams get points based on how many of the tasks their robot completes in the allowed time.

The Mindstorm robots are great, and though the programming is frustrating for anyone who is used to writing their own code, it's pretty intuitive and easy for the kids to use. The competition tasks are not easy, and the high school level challenges are pretty intense. I suspect you can find plenty of video on youtube, if not on the First Robotics site.

Aerial

Edited to add: The Mindstorm kits run about $250 apiece, so, while they're not cheap, they're not that hard for most schools to afford in small numbers.

I used Google to search "high school robotics competition" and found out that I'm behind the times!