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BEST Robotics Competition Kicks Off Challenge 2004
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."
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.
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.