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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.
That why I usually prefer the BEST competition. Very similar events, but BEST puts everyone on the same playing field. http://best.eng.auburn.edu/wor... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
My son is on the Dreadbot team, the one in the video. Last year was his first year, too. The team is only four years old and is not well funded, but we managed to get into the world championships last year and make almost all the way to the top of our division. For the record, we're not particularly well funded; we had to beg for money from local businesses so we could afford to go to the state and world competitions. I know some teams get a lot of funding and mentoring from big engineering companies, but a talented team can go a long way without that.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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.
Here you go: http://tv.slashdot.org/video/?...
> 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. f people are hiring for a factory, a kid who has been in FIRST will be picked over a kid who has not. As to Engineering and Robotics, most of the kids from FIRST continue on into College and after obtaining their degree, My company, and many other companies I know, will hire these kids fresh out of college, because they have that extra experience of designing and building robots. > 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. My frustration with the whole program is more those who look in and think this is a RICH kid's program. I guaranty that our small team does not have very many "Rich" kids. Factory worker's kids, Law Enforcement Kids, Farmer's Kids, Teacher's Kids ... THOSE are not the RICH kids. The team I am with was build from scratch and when the first robot was built they had NO money left to even go to the world championship competition after they had won their first competition and earned the right to advance. The Sponsors picked up the bill. Oh, and these kids also participate in the 4H Program, and the Boy and Girl Scouts too.
Is FIRST perfect? Not by a long shot, but this competition makes these kids learn how to problem solve on a budget, learn to work as a team, learn to market their team to the community, and sooooo much more.
Go Flaming Monkeys
Charles Libby
Mentor Team 3352