FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Its a national organization dedicated to inspiring kids to pursue studies in science and technology. They run different robotics competitions for kids as young as six, all the way to age 18. Benson Robotics, Penelpe's club, participates in two of these programs, FTC and FRC. Both programs have very important events coming up in the next few weeks which are the culmination of months, and weeks of work.
FIRST Tech Challenge(FTC)State Competition:
February 28, 2010 State Championship at South Meadows Middle School
4690 Southeast Davis Road
Hillsboro, Oregon
Opening Ceremony at 11:30 am
Competition starts at noon
Award Ceremony at approx. 4:30pm
Here is Penelope's team's robot, named Mo(bius).
The State Championship, organized by Oregon Robotics Tournament and Outreach (ORTOP) and presented by Rockwell Collins, will showcase the winning teams from this month's qualifying tournaments at OMSI and OSU (pictures). Benson Robotics Club is sending 2 teams to the competition. They are extremely excited that both teams advanced. The 24 teams who have made it this far have already been through more ups and downs (and soda and candy)in the last month than most of us experience in a year at our work.
Teams and mentors have been working hours and hours after school every week to fine tune (they are engineers, so their robots are never actually DONE) their machines, their codes, and their team cheers.
Competition rounds start at noon. Winners will advance to the National Competition in Atlanta. This is serious fun.
MEANWHILE,
The same kids who have been working on their FTC robots (above), have, for the last 6weeks, also been frantically building FIRST Robotics Competiion (FRC) robots, to compete March 4-6 in the Western Regionals at the Memorial Coliseum. Not a lot of sleep occurs for kids competing in robotics during the months of January and February.
For the FRC robots, they are given a kit of parts, a challenge (this year's involves soccer balls and hanging robots) and 6-weeks to design, build and code their 'bot. Today (Feb 23)was the day all teams had to ship their robots to the competition site in a custom-made wooden crate (which they also had to make) which is also designed to function as the team's work bench once they are unpacked.
This is the rock-and-roll event of robotics competitions. It is a huge party with teams from all over the west, including Alaska and Hawaii. Temas have a great time trying to outdo each other in costumes and team spirit, but an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration prevails, as the participants are urged to consider the event a "coopertition", a combination of cooperation and competition.
Mom Comments:
I have never seen an activity that was more inspiring for the participants then FIRST Robotics. Kids who participate get real problem solving experience, they are do not fear failure because they fail 10 times for every success and learn twice as much everytime something doesn't work out. They meet and work with industry professionals, use real tools and programs, are treated with respect and in turn learn to treat all teams with respect.
They go out of their way to help each other; even right up until the moment of competition they will help a competitor because they have learned that the better your competition, the better your own performance.
Another great component of FIRST Robotics is the outstanding mentors from the community. Benson Mentors are John Delacy, a retired Techtronix engineer (he scored the team a cool oscilliscope to play with--yeah, this is a crowd that gets very excited about a new oscilliscope), Jeff McBride, a computer engineer at Web MD, and Oliver (whose last name I'm afraid I never learned!)an engineer from Boeing. Jeff, John and Oliver along with other great parents and teachers--Liz, Amy, Mr Pellico, Sally and Susan--have contributed countless hours in support of the team.
My daughter has visited Boeing, Intel, Tectronix, WEb MD and Autodesk and met industry professionals from numerous other tech companies, big and small, local and international. She has learned to talk with adults with much greater ease by promoting something that she is passionate about. Nothing about this work seems like work (except the fundraising . . .)
I know everyone has a million things to do so instead of pleading with everyone to come to the events, I at least wanted to share with you what they are all about.
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