FIRST Robotics finals start tomorrow

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember that I absolutely gushed back in February when a FIRST Robotics Competition team spoke to the analysts and media assembled by PTC. A quick recap: a small group of high schoolers (and their adult mentors) rolled in a robot, explained the design objectives set by the Competition and then detailed how their concept and implementation would beat the other teams. They threw around words like “collaborate” and “multidiscipline” in ways any marketer would love and gave a very articulate overview of PTC’s Windchill and Pro/Engineer products. The team we saw, Team 2877 aka the Newton Ligerbots (for Newton South Lions and Newton North Tigers coming together to compete in the Robotics competition) had an impressive design and game strategy and placed 6th in the Competition in Worcester, MA. This enabled them to advance to the regionals in Boston, MA, but unfortunately the run ended there and the team did not advance. But all is not lost! Five of the 100 teams PTC sponsored this year are still in the running: Team 1519 Mechanical Mayhem of New Hampshire; Team 2574 the RoboHuskie of Minnesota; Team 1902 the Exploding Bacon of Florida; Team 2775 Liberty Robotics of Tennessee; and Team 2834, the Bionic Barons of Michigan. The FIRST Robotics Competition finals start tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia, with the winning team to be crowned on Saturday. NASA has made possible live online viewing of the championship: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” and is the brainchild of inventor Dean Kaman. The organization’s goal is “to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people” and the effort is supported by over 300 of the Fortune 500, including PTC. FIRST works with more than 200,000 students every year, from kindergarden through the twelfth grade, pairing teams of students with adult mentors (often from sponsoring companies but also faculty, parents and interested others). Mr. Kaman talked with Stephen Colbert about FIRST (among other cool things) last week in an episode of the Colbert Report. See the interview here. It’s too bad that the Ligerbots’ season is over. Good luck to all of the remaining teams!