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Robotic Gladiators
April 10, 2008
Young engineers put their skills on display recently in Boston, as they built robots for battle in what looked like an automated version of American Gladiators.
The Boston regional of the FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) Robotics Competition was held Friday March 28 and Saturday March 29, at Boston University's Agganis Arena.
A number of teams of students from the Boston area competed in FIRST Overdrive matches where three teams would form an alliance against three opponents and battle for points by attempting to direct their robots counter-clockwise around a 54 feet by 27 feet track, while transporting a trackball over and/or under an overpasss that bisects the track.
The matches consist of a 15-second period, the hybrid period, where the robots are controlled by pre-programmed instructions and/or transmitted information from the Robocoach, followed by a 2-minute period, the teleoperated period, where the drivers control the robots.
The winning three-team alliance from Tewskbury, Mass., Shenendehowa High in Clifton Park, N.Y., and Trinity High in Manchester, N.H., advanced to the world championships, which will be April 17-19 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Other Massachusetts teams that advanced were Watertown High, winner of the Rookie All-Star award, and Agawam High as the winner of the Regional Chairman's Award. The Millis High team won the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award for its efforts within the community.
Teams are given starter kits from FIRST and receive help from sponsors to buy the materials to build their robots. Each team has six weeks to design, build, code and test the robots for the competition.
There were over 1,000 students, on 51 teams from Massachusetts, Maine, Ohio, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New York, who participated in the event, which is for middle and high school students and was founded by inventor Dean Kamen.
Boston University is a platinum sponsor of the event, while MIT & MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Analogic are gold sponsors.
Posted by Jessica MacNeil on April 10, 2008 | Comments (0)
