By Khalida Sarwari
While most people were sleeping off the exhaustion following the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, dozens of local high school students awoke early on Jan. 3 to gather with their fellow robotics enthusiasts at San Jose State University for the start of the 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition.
About 40 teams participated in the kickoff event, among them Saratoga, Los Gatos, Westmont, Prospect and Lynbrook high schools. Every January, teams are told of the year’s competition and are given six weeks to plan, design and build their robots for that year’s game.
The students first gathered in a hall to watch the live broadcast announcement of the game from New Hampshire. Not only was this an opportunity to get the earliest information on the game, but it allowed the students to meet other school teams and discuss the coming year, said Rick Riccardi, a mentor for the robotics teams at Prospect, Westmont and Gateway high schools.
Harker provided coffee and breakfast while volunteers gave each team a kit containing motors, batteries, a control system and a mix of automation components with limited instructions for their robot design.
“The kit is a basic set of materials, but each high school team will come up with its own innovative design and method to play this ‘Sport of the Mind’ started by Dean Kamen 26 years ago,” said Riccardi.
Since then, Riccardi said, the “sport” has reached more than 70,000 students through more than 50 regional competitions, with a worldwide championship in St. Louis and champions hailing from Silicon Valley.
In October, robotics teams from around the area met for a competition that had them as part of a three-on-three game at the Woodside High School gymnasium. The competition involved teams tallying up as many points as possible by passing a ball from robot to robot and from robot to team member, throwing it over a bridge over the middle of the field and getting it through two goals on the ground or a large goal above the ends of the square arena.
This year’s game, titled “Recycle Rush,” is a recycling-themed activity played by two alliances of three robots each. The robots score points by stacking totes on scoring platforms, capping those stacks with recycling containers and properly disposing of pool noodles, representing litter. In keeping with the recycling theme of the game, all game pieces used are reusable or recyclable. The teams have 6½ weeks to come up with a design and build and test the robot for the competition.
The Silicon Valley Regional Competition scheduled for April 1-4 at San Jose State will give students an opportunity to vie for more than $20 million in scholarships.
“This is a gathering of a great community of the next generation of technological movers,” Riccardi said.
To watch the Jan. 3 kickoff event, visit bit.ly/firstkickoff.
Link: Robotics teams start new year with cry of ‘let the games begin!’
