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BEST Robotics Competition Kicks Off Challenge 2004

Posted by timothy on from the move-some-bits-around dept.

His Eminence writes "The Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology (BEST) robotics competition has formally unveiled its 2004 challenge, dubbed 'BEST FEVER':'Alas, poor Squeaky has been feeling under the weather. Squeaky has a severe case of BEST FEVER. His system must be treated radically. Only gene therapy can cure him, his DNA must be repaired.' Teams have already started designing and building their 'unique' robot for this challenge."

56 comments

  1. DNA? by mfh · · Score: 1

    Well if he has DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), then he really does have a problem. I mean... he's a robot, right?

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:DNA? by user32.ExitWindowsEx · · Score: 1

      There's a futurama quote somewhere that should apply to this...I just know it, but I can't think of it.

      --
      "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
    2. Re:DNA? by Drakonite · · Score: 1
      There's a futurama quote somewhere that should apply to this...I just know it, but I can't think of it.

      RNA, a.k.a. "RoboDNA" -- Robots "equivalent" to DNA.

      I know it's not a quote, but it's still from Futurama.

      --
      Shoot Pixels, Not People!
    3. Re:DNA? by Taco+John · · Score: 1

      Not from Futurama, but... "I got a fever...and the only prescription...is more cowbell...baby!"

  2. what? by jpellino · · Score: 4, Informative
    "The idea for a BEST competition originated several years ago when two Texas Instruments engineers, Ted Mahler and Steve Marum, were serving as guides for Engineering Day at their company site in Sherman. Together with a group of high school students, they watched a video of freshmen building a robot in Woody Flowers' class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The high school students were so interested that Ted and Steve said, "Why don't we do this?""

    Um, they've been living in a cave for ten years and never saw "FIRST" and just came up with "BEST"?

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
    1. Re:what? by plutonium83 · · Score: 1

      I agree, seems like BEST is a rippoff of FIRST robotics (Go 639!). Although the involvement with biology (PCR ) is very interesting to me, since I'm thinking about being a plant genetics major. I wish FIRST would incorperate things from fields other than engineering in the game.

    2. Re:what? by rmohr02 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It appears "BEST" and "FIRST" have been around for roughly the same amount of time, but I hadn't heard of "BEST" until now either.

    3. Re:what? by maxdamage · · Score: 1

      (go 174!) Is this a joke? Cause it is so close to FIRST it just seems like it, and I have never heard of this before.

    4. Re:what? by LauraScudder · · Score: 2, Informative

      The biggest difference between FIRST and BEST (and the reason my high school did BEST instead of FIRST) is corporate sponsorship. Every team that we knew who did FIRST ended up not really designing their robots because their sponsors were so invested in having a winning robot that they had their engineers do most of the design work. BEST has no sponsorship - in fact, you're only allowed to use parts from a short list - and so the students end up actually doing the design work.

    5. Re:what? by maxdamage · · Score: 1

      meh, ignore me, I googled it. They do have a link on their site to the first robotics site though...

    6. Re:what? by Coolpup · · Score: 1, Informative

      I disagree. I led Team 292 PantherTech to 3 Regional wins and a division win at Nationals in 2003. I graduated from the same high school a year before and came back to lead the team. We didn't have a single engineer to help us. The whole robot design, strategy, and practices were designed and ran by students. Some of the bigger teams that have loads of money and tons of engineers with very complex robots were helpless to stop us. (Only a battery problem and another awesome robot (Team 25) was able to stop us from winning Nationals.)

    7. Re:what? by LauraScudder · · Score: 1

      Notice that I said most teams I knew. I know that there are good teams out there who build everything and do really well, but that doesn't change the fact that FIRST is an expensive competition that schools need to round up the money for. BEST requires absolutely no investment from the school or recruitment of outside funds. They hand you the parts. So you avoid the problem of overbearing sponsors entirely. That's the main appeal of BEST over FIRST.

    8. Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      My highschool has been doing BEST almost since it started. The difference is that to participate in FIRST, you have to shell out huge amounts of dough. BEST is completely free.

    9. Re:what? by rmohr02 · · Score: 1
      Every team that we knew who did FIRST ended up not really designing their robots because their sponsors were so invested in having a winning robot that they had their engineers do most of the design work.
      Many FIRST teams are like this, yes, but not all. The Ohio State University mentors three FIRST teams, and on each the students do about as much of the design work as the mentors do. Oh, and we hold our own against the corporate-sponsored teams.

      In short, it depends on who your sponsor is.
    10. Re:what? by Neward+Rylet · · Score: 1
      FIRST ended up not really designing their robots because their sponsors were so invested in having a winning robot that they had their engineers do most of the design work.
      I was in FIRST and I think that is not always true, although we did see a lot of it (or just assumed) at the competitions. Engineers designed nothing on our robot. Everything was done in our shop execpt for sandblasting the robot's frame and a donated sign by a printing company. Everything else was done entirely by the students and teachers. We placed 1st in Virginia and 2nd in Philadelphia and went on to preform successfuly at the National Championships in Florida (2002). It was very expensive though and getting sponsorships and money wasn't easy. We even delivered phone books to raise money for Florida. After just 2 success years the teachers didn't want to do it anymore 3 of the 4 shop teachers had families and one was a baseball coach and another was getting a graduate degree. It was too taxing on them. From what I hear they still arn't doing FIRST but this year they are building a submarine.
    11. Re:what? by Samlind1 · · Score: 1
      It really does depend on who your sponsor is. I wish the team I help mentor on HAD a sponsor. The kids work to provide the money to power the team. And as someone noted - FIRST is expensive.

      There have been a lot of efforts to knock off a FIRST program at lower cost. Canada had one for quite a while, but BEST is the most organized and largest knock off.

      And the comment about watching a video from Woodie Flowers MIT class as the inspiration for BEST is really cheeky. Woodie is the National Advisor for FIRST and has served in the FIRST organization from the beginning. FIRST was founded by Dean "Segway" Kamen.

    12. Re:what? by kaszeta · · Score: 1
      Many FIRST teams are like this, yes, but not all. The Ohio State University mentors three FIRST teams, and on each the students do about as much of the design work as the mentors do.

      Indeed, as a two-time coach of team 95 (Lebanon High School), I know of at least one team that does their own design and fabrication (albeit with a lot of guidance and oversight from coaches). Programming, too (having had to teach two different teams about basic PID-controller theory).

      On the other hand, I've seen plenty of robots that were entirely designed and built by sponsors. Although you can't always tell, as I've seen some very good build quality out of some of the student members as well.

  3. hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Best. Fever. Ever.

  4. Robots, DNA, FEVER... by c0p0n · · Score: 1

    ... I hope they do not become this after robots manipulating their dna...

    --

    Your head a splode
  5. BEST Already Started This Year by AlgebraicSpore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I competed in BEST last year and after winning first place at Capitol BEST (Austin Area), my team went to Texas BEST(Tri-State Competition) and we recieved 5th place in the competition. This is year I was not on the team because my coach left and the new group was not very appealling to me, anyways I know from one of my friends that the Capitol BEST competition happened yesterday and that the BEST topic had been announced 6 weeks ago. The only thing new now is that teams are begging to qualify for the "national" level competitions. Anyways after saying that now it is time for my ranting on the competition. First of all the electronics in the kit which each team is provided are very basic, ony have one four channel controller, 3 servos, 2 large motors and 2 small motors. These electronics often fail, at unexpected time and the judges at the contest almost always blame your soldering skills and robot setup until the try the equipment on something else and realized it sucks. The most annoying part is that the controller is in now way programmable to even receive complex commands you have two joysticks and to get the robot to use both wheels while turning you have to make the controls for the wheels on the diagonal axises of the auto centering stick and use the other stick to control the motors. The robots come nowhere near autonomous and they engineering aspect which is stressed so highly by the competition is really just learning to deal with faulty equipment and hold your temper while talking to dumbasses.

    1. Re:BEST Already Started This Year by potatosalad · · Score: 2, Informative
      Yeah, the title of this article is a little off, since the official kickoff was on September 11, 2004.

      This is my first year competing, and everyone at my high school seems to treat it as "practice" for the FIRST competition later this year.
    2. Re:BEST Already Started This Year by twb010 · · Score: 1
      I was in Capitol BEST, and we never had that problem. I don't know if we got lucky and received a good kit, or maybe your soldering skills DO suck.

      I graduated last year, as did most of our team. I've been wanting to get in touch with out sponsor and see how it is shaping up. We also made it to Texas BEST (and if you remember Leander wasn't at all pleased about that).

      Tom
      Former Chief Engineer
      PH34R

    3. Re:BEST Already Started This Year by Twisted+Grind · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...learning to deal with faulty equipment and hold your temper while talking to dumbasses.
      IANAE, but from what I've heard from my engineer friends, this usually constitutes about 90% of their job.

      --
      You know you've lost it when you begin signing physical documents with =^_^=
    4. Re:BEST Already Started This Year by Tuva · · Score: 1

      Different Hubs Different Kick offs. Dallas didnt kick off till the 18th.

  6. I was a mentor by Janitha · · Score: 2, Informative

    The BEST Robotics competetions are rather simple, yet it teaches many things. I did it for the four years in high school. Good stuff. I went to the Texas Brazos Competetions yesterday, which the team I was mentoring won 1st place.

    Check out their site at http://www.tiger-robotics.org/

    or the middle school's site http://csms-robotics.dyndns.org/

    I think their not bad for website coded by hand by high school and middle school students.

  7. FIRST.... by TheUnknownOne · · Score: 0

    Im amazed by this. Being on a FIRST Robotics team, there appear to be an amazing number of similarities. Looking over the site again while writing this, they even link to FIRST.

    1. Re:FIRST.... by His+Eminence · · Score: 1

      It is similar to FIRST only in its values and principles.... FIRST is a more expensive competition with more corporate sponsord and such. BEST is quite inexpensive, so even middle schools can compete. It's a lot of fun actually!

    2. Re:FIRST.... by TheUnknownOne · · Score: 1

      What about FIRSTs Lego league? Many middle schools do not have the technical capacity to construct these robots, while a Lego robot is very cheap.

    3. Re:FIRST.... by 1337+Twinkie · · Score: 1

      Yeah, FIRST is really expensive. Our team had a total budget of over $12,000 (US), including the entry fee. To put that in perspective, there are some teams with >$50,000 budgets. Our team budget for BEST, however is about $200 (for t-shirts and office supplies).

      BEST was really designed to allow more people to be able to enter a cheaper competition and open up the field of engineering to a greater body of students.

  8. Re:DNA? Wipe that stuff off the freakin fembot! by xtermin8 · · Score: 1

    "Well, it was a girl robot, you see, and I had a lot of time on my hands" -What goes on between and a geek and his robot should be kept private!

  9. *insert plug* by System.out.println() · · Score: 1

    Go 1038!

    FIRST incorporates computer animation too (I led the team that won a regional animation award two years ago) but it's definitely a side event that really has nothing to do with the rest of the competition. There's also a lot of PR involved that actually does affect the competition (hoping that some really good team will pick you to be their partner in the finals). Still, the more fields they can incorporate, the more people can become a part of FIRST. :-)

    --
    I've got more mod points and GMail invi
  10. The great thing about BEST by soimless · · Score: 1

    Im in a best team and were going to state and our robot only mangaed to get 6 points on our own. But we had good documataion on the part of the competition called the book so were going to state.

    (im in the sa best division and my team is the Taft G-nomes state to us is Texas Best)
    http://taftbest.org/
    http://sabest.org/
    http://www.texasbest.org/

  11. A bit late? by nerd256 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Capitol BEST competition was just this Saturday. The topic and rules were announced 6-weeks ago.
    I was part of the ill-equipped Westwood team

    As you might assume, we got owned, but we did have the coolest design.

  12. move along, no biotech to see here by airuck · · Score: 1

    The DNA theme is pretty thin. There are no real laboratory robotics in the competition. Instead, Roche is leveraging the BEST competition to help distribute their genetics educational CD (linked from the BEST homepage). I suppose it IS a good way to distribute a positive spin on gene testing (don't get me wrong, I am FOR the technology), but why not take advantage of a real need. Laboratory automation is full of robotics and I am sure young minds could contribute to the development of better systems.

    Hey Roche, why not sponsor a lab related competition next year?

    --
    First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
  13. Corny Challenge... by His+Eminence · · Score: 1

    I admit... the challenge is corny... But you have to look deeper at the actual competition and tech behind it all...

  14. Someone stop me by BlueTooth · · Score: 2, Funny

    They may be BEST but they're not FIRST

    --
    SPAM
  15. BEST v. FIRST by Tuva · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As a current BEST team member (4th and final year sadly) BEST revolves little around "real" science. They just use it to base a story off of. BEST is awesome because unlike FIRST, there is no cost teams. I know in Dallas BEST Texas Instruments pays for it. Other places, I don't know who pays. BEST gives you a box of parts, and says have fun, complete this task, and you have 6 weeks. It gives you awesome experience. You learn the applications of building things, not just theory. (such as the limit switch issue we are having now theory went to heck about three days ago.)

    If you want to see our BEST bot (note: we've got two weeks left, its not done yet!) Here she is We are one of two all girls teams in Dallas BEST.

  16. Drumming Robot Wins. by NarrMaster · · Score: 1

    "Guess what! I got a (BEST) FEVER! And the only prescription, is more (BEST) COWBELL!"

    --
    That's right. All your base.
  17. shameless self-promotion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nice

    shameless self-promo

    what a tool.

    me me me, i'm a member too! I did best with team 1337 from the NT (north texas) best!!! woot woot woot.

    SM ALL THE WAY, DOWN WITH HOCK(aday)!!

    hahaha

  18. This year's robot pics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BEST is practically free since you get all the parts and only have to pay a deposit for the "returnable" kit so it's probably the *best* alternative to FIRST for teams that can't afford to pay a $6000 entrance and just want to have fun without obligating themselves too much. If anyone is interested in seeing our robot for TEXAS BEST, check out the gallery http://www.twhsengineering.com/gallery . Our BEST website should be up in the next few days ( www.twhsengineering.com/beta is the testing ground for now).

  19. BEST Texas 2002 by NikG43 · · Score: 1

    http://nikg43.sourceforge.net/best/

    I helped some friends build their bot. Ours was special because we used the printer as the body/frame. It was their first year their school was competing, so it was all new to us. We didn't have a reverse but it did have zero turning radius. I don't think we won anything but it was still fun.

    It had a griping arm to pick up the balls since they were worth the most points. It really couldn't do anything else.

    1. Re:BEST Texas 2002 by mduke · · Score: 1

      We got 13th place out of 26 if I remember correctly. I also remember putting a piezo buzzer on it just so it would beep when you moved the arm because it was cool.

      --
      Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither
  20. GO FREMD!!!! by enjoilax · · Score: 1

    I was part of the William Fremd team 2001-2003. We kicked so much booty its not funny.

  21. The challenge is actually 5 weeks old... by 1337+Twinkie · · Score: 1

    Anyway, I think the challenge is kind of corney. Robots don't have DNA. Under that, though, the actual engineering challenge is kind of cool. You can only use a VERY limited set of parts. Designing a robot out of plywood, cardboard, and duct tape is not that easy*.

    As for the challenge, the challenges have always been silly (RAD to the Core was an exception). I think this is to get younger kids (11-13) interested and exicted. The older kids look over the "fix Squeaky's DNA" bit and look at it as a chance to prove they can build a robot in six weeks out of a bucket of miscelaneous junk.

    *Yeah, it's hard. I have competed in BEST for the last four years and this is only the second robot I have helped build that works worth a darn. Check out our teams website: http://www.projectneo.net/

  22. I wonder if... by 1337+Twinkie · · Score: 1

    the teams can design a robot to repair the DNA of an exploded webserver?

  23. How to take part ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 1

    If I wanna sponsor a BEST team outside of Malaysia, how best to proceed ?

    --
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