Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Watching a FIRST Competition Robot Being Built (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the way-beyond-rock-em-sock-em-robots dept.

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.

1 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot beta is pretty good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    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 And less stuff on boring out-of-date technologies like UniX and Sun.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.