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FIRST Robotics Championship Underway

Posted by timothy on from the pull-up-an-eyeball dept.

Bob Moretti writes "The annual FIRST robotics championship is underway at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. 295 of the best high school teams from North America and beyond have brought close to 20,000 students. 130 pound, 5 foot tall robots compete for pride and national recognition. NASA is providing a webcast. An explanation of the somewhat complicated rules can be found here. Any event that puts science and engineering in the spotlight for thousands of high school kids, many of them from low income or inner city areas, is a must-see. <shameless promotion> My team is currently in 20th place in the Galileo division. </shameless promotion>"

3 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. FIRST post by r_glen · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about a link that works

  2. Re:A FIRST Lego league, too by dculp · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are quite a few sites that still sell Mindstorms products. Try ebay for starters. Amazon.com also carries Mindstorms.

    Try the following places also, Acroname and Mondotronics Robot Store

    David Culp

    Coach of the 2004 Oklahoma Regional Botball (http://www.botball.org) Champions (1st and 2nd place teams actually).

  3. Disturbing by kirisu · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is rather disturbing how many people are bashing the program. It is a good chance for students to learn about many things they otherwise wouldn't in high school. The students on the team I help mentor (1243 out of Swartz Creek, MI) did all the pnuematics and all the electrical systems. We also have students learning how to program in C, doing all the autonomous code and writing code to handle inputs from the various controls. All the mentors did was explain to them how the systems worked, they hooked it up, they figured out problems, and they built the robot.

    We are a rookie team this year, took first at the Grand Rapids regional, and are currently competing at the championship (17th place in the Curie division, currently). Sadly, I am not there.