RAGE Robotics to Partcipate in Hartford Competition

This Friday and Saturday, there is a high school robotics competition taking place at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. There will be 56 teams from all over Connecticut and surrounding states attending, including a local team that has several Tolland High School students as members. Our team would like to encourage more future participation by THS students in advance of a possible move of the team closer to Tolland next year (it's currently in East Hartford), and allowing students to experience a local competition in person is a great way to introduce them to the program. The event is free and suitable for the whole family. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.

Below are links to several short videos that describe the robotics program plus this year’s challenge:

What’s FIRST?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7k5IxsixO4&list=PL3B1C4E0C4756E728

2013 Game Description and Animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa5MGEZNrf0&list=PLumXeb1tOUyQc2RkK6y79AoYeolF8HNMb&index=11

(A downloadable version of the game animation may also be found at http://topweb.arc.nasa.gov/first/2013/animation/2013UltimateAscent-WebHD.mov.)

Our local team, called RAGE (Robotics And Gadget Engineering) is made up of high school students from Tolland, Rockville, East Hartford, and Manchester; engineers and teachers from local companies and schools; and involved parents. Founded in 1994, the team is a member of the nonprofit FIRST organization, which promotes science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to students of all ages through various types of robotics programs. In the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), teams of high school students are given a new challenge each January and then have six weeks to design and build a robot to meet that challenge. The build period is followed by a seven-week competition season where regional events are held around the U.S. and in Canada and Israel. The season culminates in St. Louis at the FIRST Championship where the best of the best compete for the overall title.

Working side by side with engineering mentors, students get hands-on experience brainstorming, prototyping, making design tradeoffs, solving problems, and building and programming actual hardware. Other team members have the opportunity to create spirit and marketing campaigns, balance the funds coming in from sponsor companies with the expenses of producing a robot and traveling to competitions, and learn the game inside and out to most effectively drive the robot.

In this year’s game, called Ultimate Ascent, robots shoot Frisbees at targets on either end of the field. There is also a 10-foot-tall pyramid in the center of the field that robots attempt to climb for even more points. The game is played on a 54’ x 27’ field between two alliances, with each alliance made up of three teams. During the course of the event the alliance makeup is always changing, so a partner in one match may be an opponent in another match.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen in an effort to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Programs exist for students of all ages from first grade through high school.

Information about the Hartford competition may be found at http://www.firstct.org/?page_id=317. RAGE may be found at http://ragerobotics.com. FIRST is at http://usfirst.org.

Ken Davidson
ken@ragerobotics.com