The 10th annual FIRST Robotics Competition is Friday and Saturday and the Ballard High School team is ready.
Members of the Vikings Robotics team were on Q13 Fox News (video embedded above or click here)showing off their robot and talking about the competition. The team put together their robot to compete in “Logomotion.”
Here’s the gist from the Ballard Robotics website:
The FIRST robotics game for 2010-2011 is comprised of three elements. The playing field is 54 feet long and 27 feet wide. At each end are two scoring grids. The grids are 3X3 squares of pegs on aluminum pipes. With decreasing point values of 3-2-1. These peg heights are adjustable so that is going to be tricky. Robots are going to place inner tubes on these pegs. The tubes, each an element of the first logo; (red triangle, white circle, blue square) when forming a logo across one scoring grid, earn double points. At the beginning of the match, all of the robots will be given a yellow circular uber tube. This tube, when place on a peg is worth double points. Any tube placed on top of the uber tube is also worth double points! Finally, at the end of the match, robots may approach the four towers in the middle of the field. At the ten second mark, robots will be allowed to deploy a fully autonomous minibot no higher than 18 inches up the pole. The minibot will then proceed to climb the pole until time expires. The first minibot to hit the top will earn 30 points, with the other places earning 20, 15, and 10 in decreasing order. The team with the most points wins!
The FIRST Robotics Competition runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday at the Qwest Field Event Center. The event is free to the public. You can read more information here.
