FIRST Robotics Championship Underway 124
Bob Moretti writes "The annual FIRST robotics championship is underway at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. 295 of the best high school teams from North America and beyond have brought close to 20,000 students. 130 pound, 5 foot tall robots compete for pride and national recognition. NASA is providing a webcast. An explanation of the somewhat complicated rules can be found here. Any event that puts science and engineering in the spotlight for thousands of high school kids, many of them from low income or inner city areas, is a must-see. <shameless promotion> My team is currently in 20th place in the Galileo division. </shameless promotion>"
FIRST post (Score:5, Informative)
Robots compete? (Score:5, Funny)
The robots do what they do because some nice person has placed a wire up their ass, unless this is an advanced AI contest.
Re:Robots compete? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's just computer games (Score:2)
I do wish they would stop calling anything remotely controlled a robot. By that definition "robots" have been common since the 1930s when the first RC model airplanes were created. Considering the price tags that are being mentioned, balsa wo
Re:Robots compete? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Robots compete? (Score:3, Funny)
15 Seconds, not 10 (Score:2)
Just goes to show... (Score:5, Funny)
Bet the american football robots still insist on wearing body armour. Bunch of old women
Re:Just goes to show... (Score:1)
A FIRST Lego league, too (Score:5, Insightful)
MINDSTORMS have become really hard to find. Do any retail outlets still carry them, or are we just left with the Lego website?
Re:A FIRST Lego league, too (Score:5, Informative)
Try the following places also, Acroname [acroname.com] and Mondotronics Robot Store [robotstore.com]
David Culp
Coach of the 2004 Oklahoma Regional Botball (http://www.botball.org) Champions (1st and 2nd place teams actually).
Re:A FIRST Lego league, too (Score:2, Interesting)
WEsttown (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WEsttown (Score:3, Funny)
My School, WEttown School, a large Private school in East PA is there too. They are the team that one the "Best Rookie Team" Award at the Anapolis Reagionals and placed 15th there too! WE are all really syked about their success.
A Special Needs school, then?
Re:WEsttown (Score:1)
I am glad his parents are paying for a private education for him!
Re:WEsttown (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WEsttown (Score:1)
For those that don't know, the matches are 2 minutes long, with the first 15 seconds autonomous. The next 1:45 primarily involves the robot pushing robots to the shooter on the team, which are shot into either a moveable or stationary goal for 5 points each, or latching o
Re:WEsttown (Score:2)
We did a better job at drexel, seeding at 9th place. We actually won the "Judges Award" at Anapolis, not the "Best Rookie Team" (which I don't think exists anyway.) At Drexel, we won the "Best Seeded Rookie Team", and the "Rookie All Star."
Here in Atlanta, we were in the Newton division. We seeded 21st.
- Sharp
Let's be honest (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's be honest (Score:1)
Someone had to say it... (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our teenage robot building overlords!
Er, wait....that would be truly frightening. Robot-building teenager overlords! Yeah, that's it.
Re:Someone had to say it... (Score:1)
Re:Someone had to say it... (Score:2)
I think you mispelled "arousing". And for the second part....Japan is WAY ahead of us on this one.
USFirst is a Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at a low income rural high school and we competed in 1997. There was no qualification to go to nationals, just pay up the $3000 entry fee. We had a local construction company pay for the entry fee and the high school gave a few hundred for parts.
When we got to the tournament (we all paid our own travel and lodging) we found out the student built robots are an extreme exception. Most literally are built at the labs of GM or NASA or who ever is the sponsor, the engineers do everything, and the students have no clue. This is encouraged. A machine actually built by students in their school doesn't stand a chance
USFirst is a joke in terms of education, it's just a big PR opportunity.
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:3, Informative)
Not true at all. Last year, my team, 212, had no corporate sponsorship, no engineers, no nothing: we built our robot in our school's machine shop with help from parents. Students had to pay their own food and lodging. None of that takes away from all of the knowledge, experience, teamwork, and of course, gracious professionalism that you learn from competing.
And oh yea, as for standing no chace...we won first place at the Central
USFirst is a Scam - Depends on School/Sponsor (Score:5, Informative)
I've been involved on the periphery of a not-so-local high school's (Rick Hansen Secondary School - Team 1241 "Force 6") development project and I'm disappointed in the extremely high cost of entry (ie to be registered and to get a kit), the sophistication of the projects as well as the other costs associated with it. It is essentially impossible to field a team for less than $35k CAN ($25k+ USD) to be successful. This includes money for the kits as well as travel expenses and, amazingly enough, promotional materials that are needed to ask for sponsorship funds.
The high cost of entry really bars schools from low-income inner city neighborhoods, which are the ones that would probably benefit the most from the experience. These schools also do not have contacts/parents in industry that could help as mentors and sponsors. This is probably the biggest issue I have with USFIRST right now.
The robot task is such that high school kids cannot work through them without substantial help from experienced engineers and what the kinds get out of the program (as well as put into it) depends primarily on how the sponsor engineers allow the kids to do. The best sponsors are high level advisors and make sure the kids plan out the designs themselves and help them think through the problems that they encounter rather than do the design themselves. I'm sure there are a lot of cases where the kids are barely able to play around with the robots before the competition because of the amount of time the sponsors put into the robots.
There is too much emphasis on the necessary fund raising. The Rick Hansen team had created a promotional DVD along with glossy brochures; there is an irony that these materials can be produced quite cheaply because they give the impression that the team has more money than they know what to do with.
Rather than limiting the kids to the materials supplied in the (incredibly expensive) kits, I would prefer seeing something where the bare minimum was provided by FIRST and the majority of parts were to be found at Home Depot/Digikey by the kids themselves. I think this would limit the price somewhat, would allow the kids to spend more time on design, building and experimenting (which is what FIRST should be all about anyway).
There should also be a restriction on how much the sponsors can do - clearly there are a lot of teams that benefit from corporate tool rooms with trained tool makers and do not rely on industrial arts rooms with the students learning how to machine parts on their own. To help enforce this, I believe that each team, to qualify must provide documentation on the robot to prove that the students were primarily responsible for the design and this documentation could be made available by USFIRST as guides for later teams.
Regardless of the warts, USFIRST is the best opportunity kids have to learn, design and compete with others. The events are amazing, fun and energetic experiences that are barely controlled chaos. The kids have a lot of fun, FIRST is a great way to build school spirit and it gives a few kids an opportunity to see if engineering/computer science is the way they want to go in life.
myke
Re:USFirst is a Scam - Depends on School/Sponsor (Score:1)
If the Rick Hansen SS you speak of is the Rick Hansen SS I'm thinking about, did your team participate in the 2003 Canada FIRST Robotic Games?
Just to inform/add a little shameless self-promotion of my own, last year marked the final year that the Canada FIRST robotic games were played. I was on the team for 3 years (2001-2003), so I just wanted to chime in.
I'm not sure how US FIRST handles things, but the biggest problems with Canada FIRST wasn't that people helped too much, it was that no one (not even
Re:USFirst is a Scam - Depends on School/Sponsor (Score:1)
That was sort of what was done this year. The kits still cost the same amount, b
Re:USFirst is a Scam - Depends on School/Sponsor (Score:1)
Obviously the goal is less about how to get on first base and more about stealing second. Or in other words - what to do WITH a robotic platform - assuming you have a working platform as a given.
Whether you like this or not - a lot of useful applications for robots will be invented by people with this kind of experience - and lacking the detailed understanding of how to put a platform together in the first place.
In reality the application of robotics is t
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:3, Informative)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2)
And as an indirect response to the grandparent, the amo
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2, Informative)
FIRST isn't about students building a robot. If you want to do that, go build one for Robot Wars or BattleBots. If you don't want to build a robot, look into the Odyssey of the Mind [odysseyofthemind.com] competition.
FIRST is about marketing your team to get sponsorship. It's about getting community involvement in order to find engineers to help y
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Soap 108 [soap108.com]
A website run by my team that records and digitizes every match for every competition we attend. Go here for video from matches of a real competition.
Chief Delphi forums [chiefdelphi.com]
The most popular FIRST related message board, and a good place to learn about the attitudes of the students involved.
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:3, Interesting)
Soap was probable the most student oriented task, but I don't find it fun sitting in front of a computer dur
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2)
I was at a low income rural high school and we competed in 1997. There was no qualification to go to nationals, just pay up the $3000 entry fee. We had a local construction company pay for the entry fee and the high school gave a few hundred for parts.
That's changed. Now, you've got to either (a) win a competition or (b) win one of a select few awards to qualify. That doesn't give FIRST 300 teams, though, so you can also qualify based on how long it's been since your team has las
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2)
I'm not sure we even made the animations, and as I implied above, even watching
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:1)
PR, yes; scam? naah (Score:1)
Re:USFirst is a Scam (Score:2)
Re:terrible webcast (Score:1)
You can also get all the recorded matches www.soap108.com [soap108.com].
If you're at the Georgia Dome right now reading this (we get an open wireless network), watch out for team 486, the Positronic Panthers, in the Newton Division. Also, team 217, you might want to secur
Re:terrible webcast (Score:1, Funny)
Sorta like BEST, only cooler. (Score:2, Informative)
Nonetheless, these programs are a great way to teach hands-on engineering to students.
1304: My Highschool (Score:3, Interesting)
about a month ago I was visiting during spring break. I was one of the founding members of the robotics club... except back then we called it RobiticA, and it was less of a robotics club per se and more of an excuse to cut class and play with electric motors, hydrolics and Legoes. in communist russia your sig posts you.
Definition of a Good Robot (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Definition of a Good Robot (Score:1)
Re:Definition of a Good Robot (Score:2)
FIRST (Score:4, Informative)
Robocup Junior? (Score:1)
Re:Robocup Junior? (Score:2)
Re:What the hell is wrong with you, anyway? (Score:1)
Yea! GO FIRST! (Score:3, Interesting)
angry black man (Score:4, Informative)
We are an inner-city public school. We had no sponsor, couldn't cough up the $20000 entry fee (or whatever it was), and made our robot for under $200. They waived the entry for our aptly titled "ghetto bot". When wer got there, the number of student built robots were slim to none. Most realyl are built by the engineers that sponsored the school.
We didnt get last though, so i guess thats good.
Re:angry black man (Score:3, Informative)
How First Works (Score:3, Informative)
2. The cost is daunting. A typical budget for a FIRST team is about $15K. This basically means that FIRST is a competition only for kids from affluent suburban high schools. If you're an inner-city school, unless you're lucky enough to get a grant, you're not good enough for this competition.
3. FIRST often arranges for grants by teaming schools with corporate sponsors. The sponsors provide in-kind cash and some mentoring. But my experience is that sponsors, being corporations, rationally want to make sure that their "donations" maximize their own visibility, and so when the kids' efforts go south, the corporations wind up doing much, even most, of the work on the robots, particularly in inner-city or otherwise disadvantaged schools with less resources. In some cases kids have been reduced to being, more or less, the joystick operators.
4. FIRST doesn't play ball nicely with other, frankly rather better, competitions. For example, BotBall (www.kipr.org) has been around for a long time, and kids have a month or two to build an autonomous robot to solve a complex task using lego. Thus this incorporates EE, CS, and ME aspects of robotics. The cost of materials is usually about $1K. Recognizing that their $15K entry made FIRST only available for the Mercedes Benz class schools, they looked to BotBall for some inspiration and decided to
I do not get a good feeling about FIRST in the least.
Re:How First Works (Score:1)
Re:How First Works (Score:1)
I run an after school robotics club at my middle school with around 40-45 student members. We meet nearly everyday after school and even during the summer. I teach the students to program in C and try to teach good engineering practices. We participate in Botball.
Botball is an abso
Re:How First Works (Score:1)
Re:How First Works (Score:1)
First Post.
Lotsa /.ers (Score:2, Informative)
My rookie team [comclub.org] placed 15th out of 52 teams in the Granite State Regional. We were a student team, with a couple of mechanical engineers who volunteered their time but not much money. We even beat our mentors!
</plug type="shameless">
Re:Lotsa /.ers (Score:1)
First Tests Engineering Know-How.. (Score:3, Interesting)
This'd directly refute the poster above, that thinks they're completely built by sponsors. I covered the Connecticut competition [pcburn.com] at the invitation of a systems operator involved with the event. It looked to me like most of the robots were well constructed home-brew with a competent technician helping the students along, shop teacher style.
Seems to me from being there and looking at the robots that there wouldn't be a huge advantage from designing them in a lab environment. The tasks are more geared toward creative design than sheer money thrown at them.
Re:First Tests Engineering Know-How.. (Score:1)
Check out Chiefdelphi.com (Score:3, Interesting)
our budget is rarly more than 6500$, 5000$ of that goes to our entry fee.
In the past 3 years we have competed against 50-75 teams at our toronto regional.
We have placed 8th,6th, and 4th.
Seeing the amazing machines that GM, Delphi, and NASA are able to make is breathtaking, our team consists of 2 Teachers, 2 engineers and aroun 15 students. We consistantly outplace teams with 20k+ funding and engineer driven..
This just shoes that determined thinking and commitment to a project can push us past our obsticles.
Re:Check out Chiefdelphi.com (Score:1)
Re:Check out Chiefdelphi.com (Score:1)
Just a correction Kev, we placed 8th in 2002, 5th in 2003, and 4th this year in 2004.
I do agree with your points, teams don't need lots of cash in order to compete with the big teams, although it helps. All you need is a strong driving platform and good ideas of how to do the various tasks.
I think that we were in a unique situation, being sponsored by an an automotive parts supplier [siemensvdo.com] and local greenhouses.
Check us out Team #773- The Kingsville Kukes [kingsvillekukes.com]
Disturbing (Score:5, Informative)
We are a rookie team this year, took first at the Grand Rapids regional, and are currently competing at the championship (17th place in the Curie division, currently). Sadly, I am not there.
Re:Disturbing (Score:1)
Re:Disturbing (Score:2)
Re:Disturbing (Score:1)
Re:Disturbing (Score:1)
Congratulations on the great rookie year!
Re:Disturbing (Score:2)
I had a great time (Score:1)
What was so cool about this whole thing was, if you needed help with your robot, there were literally 2 or 3 teams coming to help you, because teammate selections were random it was to your best interest that everyone's robot worked! Everyone there was so nice and easy to talk
My team (Score:2)
We had a good event even if we didn't win. Was kind of disappointing to not even get an honorable mention for the Chairman's Award though. (For those that don't know, the Chairman's Award is the highest award at any FIRST competition) We had a good last match, and we're proud of what we accomplished.
Congratulations to any mentors (or even students) who's team participated in the competition. This being my rookie year, it's much more involved then
Re:Regionals were fun! (Score:1)
I like to think that we've given a good experience and taught a good many engineering skills through the program. Graduates of our program (run out of the four high schools making up the near-bankrupt Syracuse City Schools) are currently students at MIT, RIT, Queens University in Kingston, ONT, and Syracuse University (myself) among others. You cannot say that FIRST leaves the s