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Robotics Education Science

2005 FIRST Robotics Competition Announced 96

Posted by timothy from the automata dept.
Gothic_Walrus writes "Dean Kamen strikes again! The 2005 game for FIRST Robotics was announced today through an international sattellite feed provided by NASA. Dubbed 'Triple Play,' the game features two groups of three robots competing to stack pyramid-shaped pieces and to align them in rows. Think Tic-Tac-Toe, but three-dimensional. This game should be a challenge for the 1,000+ active teams in FIRST, which are located throughout the U.S. and Canada (and even Brazil). Video of the game can be found here. Go 818!"
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2005 FIRST Robotics Competition Announced More

2005 FIRST Robotics Competition Announced

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  • Instead of a starting gun.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @05:54PM (#11299973) Homepage
    do the games start with WOPR saying, "Would you like to play a game?"
  • Thats nice and all, but its not exactly smart to post videos w/o a bittorrent link or something. Not that I wouldn't do it anyway just to make slashdotters not able to see the video.
  • Pardon me for being out-of-the-loop here, but who is team 818? Are they the Slashdot team or something?
  • So the robot overlords of the future can have a missing link, just like us.
  • team 818 is the FIRST robotics team #
    like Team 174 - they are at snobot.org [snobot.org]

  • Looks boring this year... (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvilSporkMan ( 648878 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:10PM (#11300110)
    They've done some things to make the programming easier and are practically forcing us to use this camera vision system when most veteran teams didn't bother with infrared sensors that were available last year, which basically destroys any competitive advantage our team (217) seems to have had. (always mechanical problems) I'm kind of disappointed as a programmer since it's all going to come down to lack of mechanical failures and driver skill.
    • They're trying to level out the playing field so that rookies can have a chance against veterans. Everyone will have to rely more on strategy than technology. Besides, FIRST isn't about the robots, but the team building and learning for the students.
    • My school is competing and did very well last year. I wasn't involved but this year I am involved in the Robotics "winterterm", a weeklong break in between two semesters. Maybe if I enjoy it I'll work on the actual competition, but it's a huge time commitment

    • Re:Looks boring this year... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:24PM (#11300197) Journal
      To be honest, I'd have to agree with you completely.

      I'm the student head of our programming group, and I'm surprised at how much they gave us. We spent endless hours trying to get our robot to drive in a straight line last year (motor power issues). This year? We've got software that will auto-correct its path...software that FIRST gave us.

      That said, I still think that there's room for the programmers to work here. There are actually many, many options for the autonomous mode - we could block other robots, for example, or maybe go to the human player pad instead of for the magical green pyramids.

      Besides...who said that you have to use the code that FIRST gives us? If it bothers you that much, write your own! :)

      I agree that drivers and mechanical issues will decide the game, but I still think there's room for us to be important in the team's success.

    • Boring? I'm really excited about the upcoming competition between the pusher robot and the shover robot.
    • They've done some things to make the programming easier and are practically forcing us to use this camera vision system when most veteran teams didn't bother with infrared sensors that were available last year, which basically destroys any competitive advantage our team (217) seems to have had.

      I'm somewhat ambivalent. As a coach with a team with a fairly good history (Team 95, Lebanon, NH), and last year's programming coach, I'm somewhat disappointed that the playing field has been leveled, since my stu

      • The vision system has to be the most efficient way to grab the randomly placed tetras during autonomous - you are not allowed to manipulate your robot after the position numbers are revealed, and who wants to randomly search and pray?
        • The vision system has to be the most efficient way to grab the randomly placed tetras during autonomous

          It probably is. But from my experience watching IR trackers and line-followers do particularly poorly, I truly do expect other non-camera solutions to present themselves, and do well.

    • I dunno, team 66 won it's regional on a great design well handled. At one point, in the final round, the opposing team thought it had the weakness down, hitting it just as it reached up, and the driver was able to drive the quad-bot on two wheels the length of the field to knock it back into play, rather than flipping over. Designing competition to destroy competitive advantage and instead rely on the skills of the participants seems like a good thing, to me. But then, I support team 66.

    • I'm kind of disappointed as a programmer since it's all going to come down to lack of mechanical failures and driver skill.

      What are you talking about? You have a robot vision system to program! You should be excited! For years FIRST has left software to be a last-minute glued-on part of the robot, programmed in PBASIC for lack of an alternative. We now have PIC micros, and they're giving us vision systems and lots of fun sensors to play with. This is going to make it a lot more fun.

      One thing I would l

    • This year is going to be incredible. For every thing they've made easier, there are a dozen other things that are still hard, both in hardware and software.

      No one used the IR sensors last year because they were useless; too many sources of IR noise and reflections that are literally invisible and there were better ways to find the posts in autonomous mode. The CMUCam is much more interesting and useful. If you don't like, don't use it, but don't complain because they gave us something better this year.

      FIR
  • In the UK, one of the channels BBC, has robot comp.'s each and every year, this involves different robots doing all SORTS of tasks, from swimming, running (2legs), climbing ropes etc etc.

    Also we have Robot Wars where robotic vehicals would battle it out etc, yet none of this ever makes BIG news such as this.

    Is it just because this has N.A.S.A backing that everyone is sitting up and taking notice, or is there something unique about this?
    • It's because FIRST is for young people.

    • Re:This involving mega bucks or something because. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:35PM (#11300254) Journal
      I think that the main difference here is the ideals of the program.

      FIRST teams are made up of high school students, people who would never be able to experience this otherwise. The competition isn't an issue - FIRST provides the game every year. The money can be hard to come by, but donations from large companies such as General Motors (our sponsor) or from other groups or individuals take care of a large portion of that. Supervision isn't hard to find either; most teams are led by engineers, teachers, and other volunteers.

      The main empasis of FIRST is not the game itself - as Dean said today, "the robot is just a vehicle, no pun intended." FIRST emphasizes what is known as "gracious professionalism" - in essence, remembering that playing fairly and developing respect and possibly even friendship for your opponents should NEVER come after winning the game. FIRST is trying to get students to become interested in engineering, in math and science. The UK may be different, but America needs those people to fill the holes in the already-falling number of technically skilled employees.

      It may sound corny and stupid, but the main goal of FIRST is literally to change the world. I'd bet that the BBC shows aren't going to benefit society quite as much in the long run. :)

    • It's the little guys (Score:3, Informative)

      by Horkdoom ( 716616 )

      The FIRST Competition can only be competed in by highschool teams. That said, they almost always have some sort of sponsorship from a large corporation or many smaller businesses. The fee for a team to go to one event was $3000 when I was on a team (GO 904!) and then $2000 for every competition after that.

      Also another thing that makes this competition unique is that every team starts with the same basic kit of parts, and are limited to certain parts that they can buy separately, despite this there are ofte

  • Thank you wonderful slashdot buddies... Teams have many large files that we have to download today :) (you can only imagine the speed). The game really isnt anything like tic-tac-toe, more like stack the tetras on the other tetras. You get extra points for getting lines, across, diagonal or verticle. (this part is similar to tic-tac-toe, but it is not the point of the game) From Team 263

  • Teams Located Around the World (Score:4, Informative)

    by JDHawg ( 800829 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:22PM (#11300184)
    Just a minor correction to the original post, FIRST teams are located all over the world. If you go to the FIRST website they have an interactive map that shows where teams are from. Last year I was able to help reprogram the robot for an Equidorian team (their keyboard was is Spanish!) and work with a team from England. This year there are even 10 new teams in Israel.

    Dean Kamen will tell you, FIRST isn't about building robots. It's about building our future.

    ------------
    Jack Higgs
    Programmer / Mentor / Parent
    Team Fusion #364
    Gulfport High School, Gulfport, Mississippi, USA

  • Robots? Pyramids? Stacking things? NASA?

    Are they trying to free Sutekh the Destroyer from his Pyramid of Mars [dwwa.net]?!

    Oh, no one here is a Doctor Who fan... (Backs slowly out of the room, embarrassed.)

  • By the way, it's tetrahedrons, not pyramids... A student from Team 677: The Wirestrippers
  • Allrighty. I am on a team, but I dont know wich one. Its for George Washington High School in Virginia, so hopefully we will do well. Its our first year in the competition so wish us luck!
    • First year sucks for most teams. The ones that start off well find a local small engineering business to get space ane expertise from. Who knows if you're lucky enough to have one of those around, but its worth a look.
  • In the spirit of FIRST go ALL team, but especial 1410. For those of you not involved 1) get involved 2) FIRST encourages gracious profesionalism (spelling optional) which means helping and chearing on all teams, especially newbs.

  • They've really kicked it up a notch, technologically. A lot of time in previous years would be spent brainstorming, designing, and building extremely specialized mechanisms, and our team would have to spend our whole kickoff weekend picking a strategy so we could pick how the robot looks. This time, however, they have created a game that requires specialized software rather than hardware, and they have also included in the kit of parts a ready-to-assemble chassis and gearbox. The end result is that we wi

    • This time, however, they have created a game that requires specialized software rather than hardware, and they have also included in the kit of parts a ready-to-assemble chassis and gearbox

      Oh, so you already have a nice mechanism for scoring tetrahedrons that works reliably and can't be optimized?

      There is still plenty of work to be done, and plenty of design as well.

      The end result is that we will have a robot to work with in a week, instead of four, and the programming team can start hacking at that

  • This is the team I mentor, 1243, second year with FIRST and we are looking forward to it. Kick off at Northville in Michigan was fun, though the workshops I attended were rather boring. I am excited about the new sensors and scripting for autonomous. Though it seems like 6 robots on the field at once is going to make it a little crowded.

  • Hm, the wmv link isn't working for me. I can ping the host, but I can't play the stream. Mplayer hangs on "Connecting to sargasso-3.arc.nasa.gov[128.102.151.19]:80". Are there any mirrors or torrents out there?
  • Great. So NASA's turning into a place for Robots to play Segway Polo?

  • A quick summary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MooseGuy529 ( 578473 ) <i58ht6b02.sneakemail@com> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @09:56PM (#11301369) Homepage Journal

    For those who aren't familiar with the US FIRST Robotics Competiton [usfirst.org], here's a quick summary.

    Dean Kamen started an organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) because he felt that students were not being inspired to pursue science and engineering. His usual analogy is that while we have immense respect for athletes, celebrities, and entertainers, we don't recognize engineers and scientists in the same way, and he wants to change that.

    The practical implementation of this is the FIRST Robotics Competition. Each January, the kickoff from Manchester, NH is broadcast to teams across the country (and world) on NASA TV, and they find out about a new game. They also receive a kit of parts, and they then have six to seven weeks to design, build, program, practice driving, and ship a robot to play that game.

    This year's game, as many are, is just complex enough that I will not try to explain it fully. Essentially, you earn points by stacking small tetrahedrons ("tetras") on the large tetra-shaped goals. There are 9 of these in a grid. You get 3 points for each tetra of your color stacked (upright) on top of a goal, and 1 point for each that is inside the goal but not stacked. Then you get 10 points for each row of 3 goals where your color is on top, and you get 10 points at the end if all three robots in your alliance (there are two alliances, red and blue, with three teams each) are in your end zone. You also receive bonus tetras (placed directly on top of the goals on your end of the field) for certain actions during autonomous mode: placing vision tetras (these have a green stripe for the camera to track) on the goals in the middle (1 bonus tetra for putting it on the side goals, 2 for the middle) and knocking down the tetras magnetically hung from the goals on your side (1 bonus tetra, and the knocked-down one stays in play; it otherwise would be removed).

    The structure of the match is 15 seconds of autonomous mode, where the robots can't (electronically) receive communications, and must navigate on their own. This is made much more interesting this year by them throwing a CMUcam2 [cmu.edu] (a small serially-controllable robot vision system--quite cool!) into our bag of sensors. Then the remaining 1:45 of the match is human-controlled. Scoring is probably another "coopertition"-style deal where the winner gets 2x the loser's score or something similar to keep good teams from kicking bad teams' asses completely.

    • Quick correction. The driver gets a full 2 minutes this year as opposed to the 1:45 of the previous years. As a driver/operator under the old rules (pre-autonomous) I find that to be a huge advantage. 15 seconds may not sound like a lot, but it really is when you have so many tasks to do.
  • We watched the kickoff broadcast at our own kickoff meeting (Go team 79!). The game itself seems simple in concept, yet very complex in the strategy. We already filled up 3 sheets of paper with possible autonomous mode strategies alone (both for us and alliance partners).

    I'm very excited to get my hands on the software ('specially the math libs) and new compiler for this year. We've done some work with gyros already on our 2004 robot, but the math required to filter the noise was too much to run all our ot
    • I didn't watch the kick-off, but my guess for the reasoning behind all the simplification is to level the playing field (so to speak). As rookies last year, my team had to start completely from scratch. After a few weeks of floundering around, we managed to hash stuff together. After managing to organize ourselves, we had to learn some engineering skills. Even though our robot shipped non-functional and untested, we did pretty well. We even made it into the semi-finals in our regional.

      During today's

  • More software oriented this year (Score:3, Informative)

    by MooseGuy529 ( 578473 ) <i58ht6b02.sneakemail@com> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @10:02PM (#11301414) Homepage Journal

    This year FIRST has really placed the emphasis on software. They've given us an easy-to-build chassis and gearbox, a game that requires at most one manipulator (for moving tetras), and a boatload of awesome tools. We get a CMUcam2 [cmu.edu], which lets our robot track things using a camera. (This also offers some interesting possibilities for funny things, like making a cart that follows a student around as they scout teams or something... we're planning on building both the FIRST drivetrain/chassis and our own, and using the FIRST one as a testbed... I want to convert it into a human-following robot cart once we're done using it ;-) They've also apparently written lots of software modules to make it easier to use gyros, position encoders, and the like, and combined them to make a plain-text-scriptable autonomous mode thing, that allows you to write the robot instructions for what to do. (This gives teams with "intelligent" robots an advantage, as more people will take the dead-reckoning route if it's easy and reliable, so smarter bots will face less competition.) Personally I'm a programmer, and our job was usually neglected in previous years, so I look forward a great deal to a season where programming becomes a major portion of our robot, and not some little detail to be filled in at the end.

  • I participated in US FIRST back in '95 as a member of the only middle school to compete without co-teaming with an area high school--Austin Academy for Excellence of Garland, Texas. The event took place at Disney's Epcot Center, and lasted roughly four days. Though we didn't win, our team took home the All-Star Rookie Award, and we had a chance to shake hands with Kamen himself. Not bad, considering we took nearly a week off from school to attend the event at one of the nation's best theme parks. Damn
  • This year's design seems much simpler, however when you really look at it, its much more complex. The programming has sadly been simplified, however the option is there for everyone to make their own modifications to the language. Essentially, as I understand it, one can create "Macros" to run within their code, all of which would be written in C code. I'm very sad to see the classic C or even PBASIC go, but as long as it doesn't go as far as drag-and-drop to create the instructions, Kamen will manage to
  • Team 824, University of Washington & Roosevelt High School. (I'm on the UW side.) The day of the kickoff it's finally sinking in that I just signed away all my weekends for the next month and a half. Normally I like being busy, but I have a feeling it'll be a big relief when this is over...
  • Go 1072 [harker-robotics.org]!
  • speeling?

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