Botball
The Botball Educational Robotics Program engages middle and high school aged students in a team-oriented robotics competition based on National Science Education Standards.
http://botball.org/ Botball is a great program to bridge the gap between intermediate school and high school. These robots are made primarily out of Lego or VEX pieces and are completely autonomous. Teams run their robots through three seeding rounds individually, then compete against other teams based on their seeding rank. Each team also selects one or two members to do a documentation presentation in front of a panel of judges. The seeding, tournament ranking, and the documentation scores are all factored in for an overall total. Teams are then eligible to win awards varying from team spirit, to best robot design, to overall competition winners. F.I.R.S.T.
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (F.I.R.S.T.), was founded by engineer and inventor Dean Kamen in 1992. It now reaches more than 42,000 high-school students on close to 1,700 teams in 40 regional competitions, seven district competitions, and one state Championship. The FIRST Robotics Competition teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.
Every year we are presented with a new game challenge and are given 6 weeks to build a robot that can compete. Robots average about 4 ft in height and 120 lbs in weight. Teams compete in alliances of 3 per side (red alliance and blue alliance) that are determined randomly during the seeding matches. The top 8 seeds then become alliance captains who can each choose two other robots to join their alliance for the finals. All three teams who are on the winning alliance qualify for the championships and share the honors.
Microbots
The Microbot competition consists of three robot categories. The cubic inch, the cubic centimeter, and the bipedal robot categories. Within these there are divisions such as the autonomous and remote control cubic inch division, and the 30 cm straight run and the slolm course for the centimeter robot. Students have to design robots from scratch. From the layout of the circuits to soldering the tiny components on and even programming the robots. Microbots is a competition that consists of many high schools and colleges in Japan, China, Korea, Guatemala, and now the United States. What is a Microbot?Our definition is a robot that fits in one cubic inch or one cubic centimeter. The one cubic inch robots we build are battery powered, meaning they have no wire tether to provide power and use IR light to transmit the remote control signal, similar to a TV remote. The one cubic centimeter robots are currently all tethered.Underwater
There are two different underwater robot competitions. There is the Hawaii Underwater Robotics Competition (HURC). The other is a smaller tournament that is run by Waiakea High School. This competition puts a twist on things is students have to waterproof everything on their robots. Robots vary on size depending on the competition. Frames usually consist of PVC pipe and three bilge pump motors, two for the forward and back, and one for the up and down. After this basic design the possibilities are endless. From claws and air tanks, to scoops and nets. Students then run a tether from the robot to the surface where they control it using a control box that they wire up. Students are not allowed to look into the pond/pool and are required to have a camera attached to their robot. They are given a camera and must waterproof it. Then they watch what their robot is doing on a TV and drive it by what they see. Competitions included, a post tsunami theme where students had to map a debrie field and open a fake safe. After teaming with the Pacific Aquaculture Facility in Hilo, a competition was formed to their needs, picking up dead fish, grabbing nets from the bottom and surface of the pond, and picking up a PVC pipe that had fallen to the bottom. Underwater robots teach students basic circuitry and waterproofing skills.
VEX
VEX robotics is another program that helps bridge the gap between intermediate and high school students. Students are given a controllers, a kit of metal, and a task and are then set loose to solve the problem. These VEX robots can be up to 18 inches cubed in size with no weight limit. VEX robotics is a competition which is world wide and thousands of teams are registered in the United States alone. VEX robotics is open to intermediate schools and high schools which typically compete in two different categories. College divisions may also be present however the college games may be slightly tweaked from the original version. Each year a new VEX game is released at VEX Worlds which students compete in local (equivalent of district events) and regional events. If teams rank high enough in the regional events, teams may then be invited to VEX Worlds which is the final competition. The preliminary and qualifying matches are setup as follows: alliances are comprised of four teams, two for red and two for blue. In the finals the top eight seeds can choose 2 additional teams each to form an alliance of three. These alliances compete to become the winning alliance, all three are credited for being the top. |
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