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FIRST Robotics Competition Announced
Z80xxc! writes "FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) has officially announced the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition. This competition, started by inventor Dean Kamen, encourages high-school students to design and build robots to compete with and against other FRC teams. The competition overview video is available from NASA. This year's competition is called 'Lunacy.' The game consists of a series of 135-second face-offs during which the student-designed robots must pick up 9-inch game balls and deposit them in trailers hitched to the opposing teams' robots. The game field is coated with regolith, a slick polymer material, and special wheels are used to create a low-traction interaction with the crater's surface. Together, these combine to simulate the one-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon. For any readers who are interested in participating, FRC teams can always use more adult mentors."
I participated in this competition just two years ago. Our robot would've worked a lot better had they left us programmers more than 6 hours to work with it... (darn mechanic guys always taking up more time than they should)
Anyways, it was a blast, anyone who can participate in this really ought to.
Because journals are not tagged 'story', and /. seems to be moving to a different comment/story management system. Maybe they'll move to comment tagging in the future, or tag other things in addition to stories?
(Perhaps a) Better question... How do these tags work in the first place?
Why can there be a tag I've never seen before and is likely to have a very low probability of having more than one person think of - especially when that tag is not referenced in any comment below TFS?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
It gets better: another high school robotics competition is the BEST Competition (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology)
[ah, mis-moderation, clearing]