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Watching a FIRST Competition Robot Being Built (Video)
We have shown clips from FIRST Robotics Competitions before on Slashdot, with a concentration on the Dexter Dreadbots because they're the "home team" for Slashdot's home office in Michigan. Today we hear from team mentor Jennifer Bryson and watch as the team works on their 2014 competition robot. They need to have it finished by February 18, so they're in the home stretch of the robot-building task. The competition itself starts on February 28 and keeps going until the world championships are held during the last weekend in April. The Dreadbots did well last year. This year? Who knows. But win or lose, it's all For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, AKA FIRST, also AKA "The ultimate Sport for the Mind." And if you're not near Ann Arbor, MI, check for a FIRST competition near you. It's an international organization, so you're likely to find one -- and if you don't, perhaps you can help start a FIRST team where you live.And for those of you who don't see the video below, here's a link to it.
Just want to say, beta is really floating my boat right now. All the greybeard whiners have gone off on their silly 'boycott', leaving the a quality slashdot audience here to enjoy the site. Let's face it, we're the future! Hip, younger, more sociable, more trend-orientated and 100% more employable than the old crowd. Dice knows where their future revenue comes from and they know it isn't with the oldsters.
Back to beta. I have a few suggestions that would really improve things even further and hopefully will make it into the final slashdot 'release':
-Slightly larger font and font spacing between lines. A lot of us read on HD tablets don't forget!
-More content that is relevant and engaging with today's IT crowd - so topics like ruby on rails, PHP, wordpress plugins, apple products, SEO. And less stuff on boring out-of-date technologies like UniX and Sun.
-More comment posting formats - like inline images, youtube vid embeds, code containers etc.
-Less comment nesting - say 2 or 3 max, to make viewing on smartphones more comfortable
-Lose the 1990s scheme! Seriously, teal? Take a look at apple or microsoft's website if you want some perfection in design with modern web standards.
-Make slashdot more social - like integrated facebook and twitter feeds on the left hand side of the page from the top 10 users or something.
Thanks! Joey.
Which link is the video?
Is that some kind of robot that automatically posts "FIRST" in comments sections
My daughter has participated in the last year's competition. It was a shame to witness how less talented but better funded teams came out on top just because they were better funded. The kids tried real hard but with shitty equipment and mentors, there's not much they could do.
FIRST: Like scientology, only more expensive.
FIRST: Teaching budding engineers how to live a death march.
Etc.
Slashdot's home office is in the Murder Mitten?
I participated in this program in 1996-1997, in Manchester, NH. Since the program was founded by Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) - and his offices were based in Manchester - the program was pretty big there.
At the time, my team was sponsored by PSNH (electric co.) - as a result, I learned a lot about engineering, and programming.
I really see it as a major influence in my decision to ultimately go to engineering school.
While it looks like the team now has a new sponsor ( http://powerknights.com/ ) - and they no longer go to EPCOT for national competitions, like they once did - it is great to see that this program is still active, and vibrant, since it really offers so much more than a "battlebot" type program.
Kudos to all the sponsors, and mentors out there.
"MODULE ERROR. Problem downloading the player. Please check your internet connection."
Uh, right. My Internet connection is just fine, thank you.
I helped mentor a first time high school team for the smaller FIRST Tech Challenge - FTC Block Party a couple of months ago and even that was a blast. We built a smaller 18" robot for collecting and dumping 2" bricks into baskets and doing a couple of other higher point challenges such as a flag raise and a pull up out of Lego MindStorms and Erector like Tetrix pieces. We did pretty good coming in 3rd out of 11 teams considering it was our first time ever at a robotics competition.
I hope they can eventually step up to the full size FIRST Robotics Competition at some point. We also had a guest team demonstrate their last year's Frisbee throwing robot at the event and it was pretty cool as well.
Nevermore.
Had to say it. But my team won the first FIRST LEGO competition, so I'm entitled a little deference, right? ;D
tma;dw
is how to cheat and how to lie.
Watch the video - "companies hire first kids because of their experience." That is a good example lie. No company is going to hire into robotics, a kid with just a high school diploma.
To be competitive you MUST lie about your costs, and your mentor MUST do the majority of the work. The kids are only there for appearance, sponsored by the mommies and daddies with the most money.
And face it, today's STEM mentors think hardware is all that is needed, they are totally clueless about software. An LED blinking arduino is sure to be the best robotics can offer. It is why none of the DARPA entries had any kind of resemblance to a decent software development environment (not needed). Any idiot knows you don't need modern software, or things like debuggers, or source control systems that make sense. And good old terminal based editors are still the best you can get! Seriously, STEM disgusts me. It is people finding way to take more corporate welfare pretending it is helpful to kids that deserve it.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
And judging by the "younger crowd" there brainless when it comes to reporting/commenting on anything remotely truthful.
That's not to say the younger crowd won't comment and correct slashdot stories, giving a more rounded and honest opinion of from slashdot's status quo of sensationalism and false reporting. But the younger crowd seems to be hard-lined in being to the left or right, and not staying in the middle, of course the older crowd is like that as well but they fail to admit to it.
I don't have a problem with the look of, the "new" slashdot. But I have to open a new tab to read the entire story, which really doesn't matter since I did that anyway with the old slashdot to read the comments.