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FIRST Robotics Championship Underway
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>"
I think the Lego league sounds fun.
MINDSTORMS have become really hard to find. Do any retail outlets still carry them, or are we just left with the Lego website?
Your full of shit. I was in FIRST for 4 years. Our Sponsor was Motorola (Team 108 - the SigmaC@Ts if you must know). We built our robot side by side with the engineers. Solely engineer built robots are the extreme exception, as are solely student built robots. The whole idea is you work with and learn from professionals. Teams whose students had nothing to do with their bot are not encouraged, they are reviled, and it is easy to tell when you talk to the team members (as a driver for two years, I've had plenty of opportunities to talk to other teams). You picked NASA as an example, which shows your ignorance. NASA has a grant program where they pay the entry fees for you and thats it. You can only qualify for two years, then your on your own. Most of the teams you saw with Nasa on them were probably rookies. It sounds to me like you tried it once, and when you got beaten by the veteran teams, got bitter and didnt come back. US FIRST is a great education oppourtunity, by the time I graduated I was teaching the engineers things about how to build a robot. Also, although it didnt in 1997, the national competition now has qualifications to attend it. You now must win a regional or regional award, earn a "bye" based on last year's performance to qualify for nationals, or be a rookie team to get in to nationals. It's also worth noting that if the companies just wanted the PR opportunity, theres lots of places they could spend it and get a lot more (PR-wise) for their very large sums of money. Also the engineers and other staff at these companies use their own, unpaid time to work with the teams. Also, student run student built teams can be competitive, bit don't expect to do it in 1 year, against teams that have been around since the program started. finally, some other FIRST related links the story should have mentioned.
Soap 108
A website run by my team that records and digitizes every match for every competition we attend. Go here for video from matches of a real competition.
Chief Delphi forums
The most popular FIRST related message board, and a good place to learn about the attitudes of the students involved.