2013 FIRST Robotics Competition Kicks Off

theodp writes "Saturday, the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition kicked off, and — much like the Pinewood Derby — mentoring by adult engineers there doesn't hurt one's chances of winning. So, any advice for 'ordinary' high schools going up against the likes of FIRST Robotics Teams sponsored and mentored by NASA? FIRST Robotics Team 254's Lab at NASA Ames Research Center, for instance, includes 'an 80% size practice field as well as a small machine shop, workspace, computer lab and meeting space.' Not surprisingly, Team 254 won the 2011 FIRST Championship." We took our camera to the Michigan FRC championships last year, and had a great time.

Comments

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Spiked_Three]

Please, like costs are any burden. You people spend tons of money to win, whatever it takes.

Reality is 15 seconds of autonomous is a lie. For the reasons you just mentioned, any team that scores a single point during autonomous has had the work done by the 'mentors'.

Maybe if you would require more autonomous, and approach it without cheating, then the kids would learn something about robotics.

These things are remote controlled cars, crappy ones at that.