Robotics+Competitions

The competitions can be fun. I've had students you prefer to compete in local and state technology fairs and others who like the nationally organized competition events.

Some of the major competitions are:


 * FIRST and BEST - two competitions for high schoolers. Best is much less expensive
 * FTC - part of FIRST but high schoolers and some younger students compete using the smaller and less expensive LEGO Tetrix robots.
 * FLL - FIRST LEGO League for 9 to 14 year olds
 * JFLL for 6 to 9 year olds.
 * RoboCup - University students
 * RoboCup Junior - High School and younger
 * SumoBot competitions

FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology @http://www.usfirst.org/ The international championships, World Festival, is held here in Atlanta in April. Spectator admission is free. Mission - to build not only science, engineering, and technology skills and interests but also self-confidence, leadership, and life skills. FIRST was started by Dean Kamen of Segway fame in 1989. Excellent competition and the teams and their big robots are very impressive. However, it's expensive. Please refer to the FIRST website for the most current information about costs, rules, and competition challenges. Costs: $6,000.00 U.S. Participation in one 2009 Regional Event, the Kit of Parts, associated materials and support. $5,000.00 U.S. Participation for each additional 2008 Regional Event. $5,000.00 U.S. Participation in the 2008 Championship.

FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) portion of FIRST competition Generally for students 14 and older although there are many younger students who compete as well. Students use the LEGO Tetrix kit and additional parts they buy to build a robot for the challenge. Only part of the robot's actions have to be programmed. During most of the competitive round, students use the remote control units to manage robot behavior. You can use NXT-G or RobotC ($49) from Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon has provided excellent webinars and a forum to help students learn the RobotC program.

FTC costs $275 Registration Fee to FIRST to compete $900 for the Tetrix kit which includes an NXT kit. $0-$300 Individual tournament fee (varies)

FLL Competition (ages 9 to 14) The competition consists of four equally weighted (25% each) sections:
 * Research project, paper, and presentation. This year the topic is alternative energy. The research will be to do an energy audit of a public building, talk with experts in the energy field, and write up a recommendation for how the owners of the building can reduce energy use and costs. Then come up with an entertaining way to present this to the research judges.
 * Competition board: Design, build, and program a robot to accomplish 9 specified tasks in 2.5 minutes.
 * Technical: Teams take their robot and printouts of programming to meet with technical judges who ask them questions about the programming and why and how they designed their robots as they did. They can also pose technical questions of a more general sort for the teams to answer.
 * FLL Values: Teams are also judge on their behavior by know and "undercover" judges. The values includes: we demonstrate gracious professionalism, we practice friendly competition, what we learn is more important than what we win, we do the work ourselves, and we have fun.

FLL costs An estimate of main costs for a new team is $700 and $400 for returning teams (They already have a Mindstorms kit.). This estimate doesn't include extras such as team buttons, shirts, travel, etc. It does include FLL registration, challenge board mat and setup pieces, Regional and state competition fees are usually between $30 and $50. Promo items that the team can hand out in the pit area can be pencils, tattoos transfers, button, pins with team name and logo, home-made business cards, luggage tags

**JFLL competition (ages 6 to 9)** Teams are comprised of up to six children and an adult coach. Other people such as parents, grandparents, teachers, and community members are encouraged to mentor, volunteer, and help the team to success. The JFLL Challenge is a mini-challenge based on the same real-world topic as the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge. It is a scaled-down version that is often more open-ended so that the variety of ages can customize the project to their ability level. Teams generally have at least one month to research and build prior to showcasing their accomplishments.

JFLL Costs: Team registration $15(US) JFLL Base Kit is $95 Teams that have a kit from last year do not need to get another one this year. This year teams will design a model depicting an aspect of this year’s "Power Puzzle" Challenge. Children will spend approximately one month exploring, investigating, designing and building a model made with LEGO bricks. In conjunction, teams create a "Show Me" poster that depicts the teams’ experience during this process, through drawings and words.

Teams are encouraged to gather together and hold local events to share their experiences with family and friends.

**BEST**(Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) Summarized from the BEST website: "BEST is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization whose mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like, science and engineering-based robotics competition."

Anyone—colleges/universities, corporations, individuals—can start a new hub serving a minimum of eight teams. The average first-year cost for running a 24-team hub is approximately $28,000. Local hubs rely on financial support from corporations and/or colleges/universities in order to allow schools to participate at no cost.
 * Last year, BEST had over 700 middle and high schools and over 10,000 students participating each fall.
 * **There is no fee for schools to compete in BEST.**
 * BEST features two parallel competitions:A robotics game, which is based upon an annual theme with four teams competing at once in a series of three-minute, round-robin matches.The BEST Award, which is presented to the team that best embodies the concept of Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology. Elements include a project summary notebook, oral presentation, table display, and spirit and sportsmanship.
 * Each school is provided kits of equipment and parts, a set of game rules, and given six weeks to design, build, and test a small Radio/Controlled (R/C) robot that outperforms other robots.
 * Winning teams from local competition sites (called “hubs”) advance to regional championship sites (“regionals”).
 * Engineers and other technical professionals from local industries serve as team mentors who advise and guide students through the design and construction of their machines.
 * RoboCup and RoboCup Junior**

"RoboCup is an international joint project to promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is by 2050, to have developed a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer."

RoboCup Junior offer three challenges: One of the advantages of RoboCup and RoboCup Junior is that the challenges remain essentially the same each year so that teams can build upon the work they have done in previous years to improve their robots/programming. Info about the NE regional competition for this year @http://rcj.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/
 * Soccer - You and another team compete against two other teams in a soccer match, using a plastic ball that emits infrared.
 * Rescue - Your tema's robot has to negotiate an multistory miniature building (about 3' high) and board, following lines an paths to identify "victims" (in different colors of electrical tape.
 * Dance - Program your robot to dance to a song, The team may create a costume for the robot and for themselves and may dance along.

CNN video of last summer's International RoboCup competition at Georgia Tech @http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/studentnews/08/09/transcript.fri/index.html

Good YouTube video of a sample of RoboCup Junior Competition @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptnQ8yXb0RI&mode=related&search=