Watching a FIRST Competition Robot Being Built (Video)

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We have shown clips from FIRST Robotics Competitions before on Slashdot, with a concentration on the Dexter Dreadbots because they're the "home team" for Slashdot's home office in Michigan. Today we hear from team mentor Jennifer Bryson and watch as the team works on their 2014 competition robot. They need to have it finished by February 18, so they're in the home stretch of the robot-building task. The competition itself starts on February 28 and keeps going until the world championships are held during the last weekend in April. The Dreadbots did well last year. This year? Who knows. But win or lose, it's all For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, AKA FIRST, also AKA "The ultimate Sport for the Mind." And if you're not near Ann Arbor, MI, check for a FIRST competition near you. It's an international organization, so you're likely to find one -- and if you don't, perhaps you can help start a FIRST team where you live.And for those of you who don't see the video below, here's a link to it.

Jennifer:I am Jennifer Bryson. I am one of the lead mentors for the Dexter Dreadbots robotics team. I took on this role about three years ago. I’ve been a mentor since the team working here, which was four years ago.

Male Speaker:So this is going to be like two arms with rollers on it, as the ball is on the playing field, this will lower down, and the ball will be rolled into a robot with a shooting mechanism

Jennifer:We are here to talk a little bit about the 2014 FIRST Robotics Competition this year as Aerial Assist. We are right in the middle of the build season right now.

Interviewer:And what is the competition this year?

Jennifer:The competition this year is a game played with very large exercise balls, about 2’ in diameter. And the goal is for the alliances of three robots to get the ball down the field cooperatively. There are three zones on the field and each of the robots is supposed to touch the ball in order to get maximum points as it goes down the field in a different zone. And then they have to shoot it into the goal at the end of the field which is large enough to accommodate the 25” ball.

Male Speaker:It is essentially to cooperate with other robots to pass the ball between each other and to hit it inside the goal very.

Jennifer:About the competition, FIRST in itself is for inspiration and recognition for science and technology. Twenty years ago, we started this competition, and it has now gone worldwide. Michigan has always been one of the big areas for FIRST. And the goal of FIRST is to get high school students involved in something that is real world engineering and science while being fun. They refer to it as the varsity sport for the mind. So it has a competition, it is a game, it has got cheering and things like that, but it also has real skills that when kids are done with high school, if they are thinking about engineering or science, they really have a foundation that they can understand what that means to do and have had experience already building things and seeing their own work come to fruition in competition.

Interviewer:And they hand out various awards and scholarships?

Jennifer:Yeah, FIRST has significant amount of awards available to give to students who have participated on FIRST teams. And there are awards for it. It is also, even if you don’t get a scholarship, it is very very well recognized. Employers like it. Because robotics is expensive, and teams need sponsors. But often the sponsors are companies who then know that these kids who’ve been on FIRST teams have more than a basic understanding coming out of school and things like that, and so they will.

Jennifer:So they will hire them or they will have them intern with them or things like that.

Interviewer:And how many students or how many kids are on the team?

Jennifer:It really will vary. Some of the small teams have like five or seven students. That was our first year; four years ago, we had six or seven students depending on which point of the year you talked to us about, they can go up to many many students. I don’t even know how big some of them are. A lot of them are right around 30 to 50 size.

Interviewer:How many mentors are on the team?

Jennifer:That varies a lot as well.This year, we are excited because we have 17mentors. However, while that sounds like a lot, when people can give you one afternoon a week or things like that, we are still finding that we really can use probably two or three especially mechanical mentors here, even if it is two or three days that people can be here, because there is a continuity when you have a six-week build season it all happens so fast that if you aren’t here,if you are only here once a week, you really don’t even have an idea of what’s happened in the time you’ve been gone.

Interviewer:And how long is the build season? And then the actual competition?

Jennifer:On January 4ththey announced the game. We now have until February 18that 11:59 p.m. when we will have to walk up the ropes. So it is about six weeks and three days. And then the competitions starts February 28th, March 1st. Here in Michigan it is a district system. So every team in Michigan that is registered with FIRST gets to compete in at least two districts. And the districts run from the last week in February, first week in March through the first weekend in April. And then the second week inApril 9 to 12or so, is the state competition. And then the last weekend in April is the world championship.

Slashdot File footage from FIRST 2012 Competition

Male Speaker:We are trying to make the cannon drive again. It is a really nice maneuverability and skill but the problem is you don’t get any traction. So making a fancy drive systemwhich also has traction wheels. We have pneumatic cylinders which are going to select which wheels we are using at the time. So we can switch between the agility of the cannon wheels or the traction and pushing power of the traction wheels.

Male Speaker:And we are the programmers in the robotics team.Right now, we are like starting to control the motors. And we are writing in C++, we are testing on board right there.

Male Speaker:This way we will be able to have more control of the robots this year, so the actual programming team this year will be able to do more advanced things with the robotics.

Interviewer:And so how exactly does it work?

Male Speaker:We plan to use a winch similar to this, like so, and when it is released, it is going to launch the ball. Like so.

Re:

[dkman]

http://i141.photobucket.com/al... [photobucket.com]

I'm not going to go all F.B. because I'm not a sailor, but as a techie site this definitely looks silly.

Re:

[wjcofkc]

Your post being offtopic aside, if you really mean what you are saying and aren't just engaging in elaborate trolling, send everything you posted to: [e-mail] with Beta Feedback in the subject line. They really do take such emails seriously. I've been on Slashdot since 1997 - hell, I even remember Chips n' Dip. And I will admit that the beta site is starting to grow on me. I sent them an email a few days ago about what I like and don't like and Timothy (I think it was Timothy) emailed me back t

Re:

[Roblimo]

Here you go: http://tv.slashdot.org/video/?... [slashdot.org]

Re:

[Redeye Carci]

That why I usually prefer the BEST competition. Very similar events, but BEST puts everyone on the same playing field. http://best.eng.auburn.edu/wor... [auburn.edu] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]

Re: Unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

FIRST of all (see what I did there), as a mentor on a 5th year team, I can understand some of the frustrations being voiced in here. However, if you're spending $10k on your 'bot, then you are about $6k over the limit set for spending, and that must mean you are fudging your Bill of Materials. We have never gone over on cost, and we made it to World Championships our rookie season with a shoestring budget and only 6 kids on the team.
As far as Mentors doing the work goes, while we do help on our team, we m

What is really being taught

[Spiked_Three]

is how to cheat and how to lie.

Watch the video - "companies hire first kids because of their experience." That is a good example lie. No company is going to hire into robotics, a kid with just a high school diploma.

To be competitive you MUST lie about your costs, and your mentor MUST do the majority of the work. The kids are only there for appearance, sponsored by the mommies and daddies with the most money.

And face it, today's STEM mentors think hardware is all that is needed, they are totally cluel

Re: What is really being taught

[Matthew Jenkins]

Ok, just curious spike, are you actually a part of FIRST or just frustrated with STEM as a whole? Because I can guarantee that is not what is happening with our team. And if so many mentors are so unhappy with the program, then why are you in the program? This whole thing is voluntary.

Re:

[cslibby]

> Watch the video - "companies hire first kids because of their experience." That is a good example lie. No company is going to hire into > robotics, a kid with just a high school diploma. f people are hiring for a factory, a kid who has been in FIRST will be picked over a kid who has not. As to Engineering and Robotics, most of the kids from FIRST continue on into College and after obtaining their degree, My company, and many other companies I know, will hire these kids fresh out of college, b

Re:Unfair competition

[Chelloveck]

My son is on the Dreadbot team, the one in the video. Last year was his first year, too. The team is only four years old and is not well funded, but we managed to get into the world championships last year and make almost all the way to the top of our division. For the record, we're not particularly well funded; we had to beg for money from local businesses so we could afford to go to the state and world competitions. I know some teams get a lot of funding and mentoring from big engineering companies, but a talented team can go a long way without that.

Re: Unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to dissent. Let me also note that we won Regionals and then State and are headed to World/Globals in St Loius in April.

There is no funding for us other than $100/kid. That is less than an 8 game Rec Soccer league. A couple parents bought the Mindstorm and then the EV3.

The robot score is a small part of determining who wins. We finished 16th in robot scores. The FIRST part about your presentation is the big thing if you want to win.

We told all kids/parents that all coding (every line) must be done b

Re:

[LabratSR]

You seem to be comparing FLL with FRC. Here's a dose of reality. This does not include the money for the Bot itself, which can be up to 4000 dollars http://www.usfirst.org/robotic... [usfirst.org]

Re:

[DeTech]

If you're worried about who wins you're kind of missing the point.

Home office?

[Clyde Machine]

Slashdot's home office is in the Murder Mitten?

Great program

[bguthro]

I participated in this program in 1996-1997, in Manchester, NH. Since the program was founded by Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) - and his offices were based in Manchester - the program was pretty big there.
At the time, my team was sponsored by PSNH (electric co.) - as a result, I learned a lot about engineering, and programming.
I really see it as a major influence in my decision to ultimately go to engineering school.

While it looks like the team now has a new sponsor ( http://powerknights.com/ [powerknights.com] ) - and they no

No video

[jlv]

"MODULE ERROR. Problem downloading the player. Please check your internet connection."

Uh, right. My Internet connection is just fine, thank you.

FIRST Tech Challenge - FTC Block Party

[nevermore94]

I helped mentor a first time high school team for the smaller FIRST Tech Challenge - FTC Block Party a couple of months ago and even that was a blast. We built a smaller 18" robot for collecting and dumping 2" bricks into baskets and doing a couple of other higher point challenges such as a flag raise and a pull up out of Lego MindStorms and Erector like Tetrix pieces. We did pretty good coming in 3rd out of 11 teams considering it was our first time ever at a robotics competition.

I hope they can eventually step up to the full size FIRST Robotics Competition at some point. We also had a guest team demonstrate their last year's Frisbee throwing robot at the event and it was pretty cool as well.

Too many ads

[lexman098]

tma;dw