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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."

9 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. 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"?

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    1. 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.

    2. 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.

  2. 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 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.

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  3. 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.

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

    They may be BEST but they're not FIRST

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  5. 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.