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Latest News 05/20/2012

We Won the World Championships!

Last Minute Preparations

About FTC

For the Inspiration of Science and Technology

FIRST Tech Challenge is one of four robotics competitions run by the organization FIRST. The goal of the organization is to inspire children and teenagers to participate and become interested in the fields of engineering, computer sciences, and robotics.

FTC was designed as a mid-level robotics competition for high-school aged students. Each year, FIRST releases a new game, and new tasks for the robot to perform. This year’s competition involves driving a robot around a 12’ by 12' field to gather plastic street hockey pucks from racks placed around a field. The robot must then score them in a central area.

A match has two parts – a 30-second period in which the robot travels autonomously around the field, and a 2:00 period where the robot is remotely driven around the field. Teams have one robot, but they are partnered with another team during each match, forming an “alliance.” The alliance works together during each round to score points. If you would like to take a look at the game manual click here.

FTC competitions are always engaging and exciting events, in which teams put their skills, robot, and teamwork to the test. The game is not just limited to scoring points – it is often also to interfere with the other robots. The alliance that a team has, and their degree of cooperation with them, can result in the winning or losing of a match.

About FIRST

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen to promote technology to young people. The goal of FIRST is to “transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.” FIRST is composed of four competitions, JFLL (ages 6-9), FLL (ages 9-14), FTC (ages 15-18), and FRC (ages 15-18). Each one offers different challenges to a different age group.

FIRST competitions not only center around robotics, bur also the unique aspect that is Gracious Professionalism. With Gracious Professionalism, fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions. Gracious Professionals learn and compete like crazy, but treat one another with respect and kindness in the process. They avoid treating anyone like losers. No chest thumping tough talk, but no sticky-sweet platitudes either. Knowledge, competition, and empathy are comfortably blended.

For more information, please visit the official website.

About the Engineering Notebook

The FTC competition is about more than just building robotics, it is also about the learning and understanding gained through building your own robot. The building, programming, and design process is documented as the team prepares for the competition in the "engineering notebook".

This book is used to show the process that the members of the team went through to get to their final product, and allows all teams to show off the quality of their thinking, even if their robot doesn’t perform as expected when they get to the competition. It is one of the most interesting and individual aspects of FTC - creating an environment where the journey is celebrated, not just the end result.

A required part of the competition, the engineering notebook records the individual challenges a team faces each day, how they were overcome, and what was learned from solving them. Each time we meet, we record the progress we made that day in our engineering notebook.

Our team will be using our blog to share some of the progress we have made, as a sort of "mini-engineering notebook."

More information about the engineering notebook can be found on the FIRST website.