Edu News| March 21, 2011
Student Teams Compete in FIRST Robotics
Sixty-four high school teams will compete in the 20th season of the Los Angeles regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competition. The competition will be held Friday, March 25 and Sat., March 26, at the Long Beach Convention Center.
This year's "Logo Motion" game consists of two competing teams, with three robots each, on a flat, 8.2-by-16.5 meter (27-by-54-foot) field. The teams earn points by hanging as many plastic shapes (triangles, circles and squares), on their scoring grid, in a two-minute-and-15-second match. The higher the teams hang their game pieces on their scoring grid, the more points their teams receive. The robots can also deploy mini-bots to climb vertical poles for a chance to earn additional points.
Students have six weeks to design, build, program and test their robots to meet the season’s engineering challenge. These young inventors create a robot – with the help of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., aerospace and other companies and higher-education institutions. They participate in competitions that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration and the determination of students. JPL is sponsoring 11 robotics teams.
These students are among the 51,000 students in more than 2,000 teams from around the world vying to compete in the FIRST championships April 27 to 30 in St. Louis, Mo. The FIRST Robotics competition is part of NASA's Robotics Alliance Project, which aims to expand the number of robotics systems experts available to NASA.
More information and a short video about FIRST is at: http://www.usfirst.org/.
TAGS: FIRST Robotics, Team Competitions, Robotics, High School
