Mentors from industry and academic coaches will assist, but students make the ultimate decisions for their robots. John Fowler, a licensed professional engineer, is one of this year’s mentors. Fowler said he is happy to support the youth in this way. Some members of last year’s team are also mentoring this year’s group by showing them how to use different tools. Thomas hopes the excitement about the BEST program will continue to grow and that middle schools and more high schools will participate.

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Thomas said she is less stressed this year, even with having to complete the project in ten weeks, because this time the team will be building a practice field of their own. Teamwork is necessary in order to solve problems by brainstorming, develop leadership skills and spirit, she said.

The BEST schedule of events includes visiting the Exploreum to eat pizza and watch an IMAX movie, as well as enjoying “Mall Day”, where students get to test drive their robots. That day also allows students to share ideas with fellow entrants about the robots. October 19-20 are competition days at Davidson High School in Mobile. There will also be a live feed from NASA on that day. The regional competition will be held Dec. 7-8 at Auburn University.

Photo by Kathy Ferniany/Staff Andrew Weichman, Steven Imle, team President Scott Lump, team Vice President Clinton Gartman from Team Torobotics at Spanish Fort High School check out last year’s robot, “Spleee”, with sponsor Julia Thomas.
Some Spanish Fort students are getting a chance to build their own robot for a national robotics competition called BEST — Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology in students. “Team Torobotics,” a team with 25 members, will represent Spanish Fort High School.

In a game-type format, each team designs and builds a radio-controlled machine which must accomplish defined tasks. Students are involved in every aspect of the project including objectives, decisions, design, publicity, art, team spirit and the engineering process.

Each school is only allowed one team, but there is no limit to the number of students who can participate. Teams are placed in geographical hubs, consisting of eight schools. The kick-off day was held Sept. 8, and each team received identical kits of equipment, raw materials and a detailed set of game rules.

FL, in April 1998, the team was a finalist for the Chairman’s Award. This most prestigious award of the entire program is presented to the team judged to have created and documented the best partnership effort between team partners including outreach activities with children, universities, and corporate sponsors in their community as they prepare for the competition.

Prior to the national competition, the Lewis/East Tech team competed at the FIRST Great Lakes Regional Competition, where they won the Xerox Creativity Award. This award is given to the team that displays the most creative design, use of a component or the most creative or unique strategy of play. The judges noted that the NASA/East Tech robot used design ingenuity by applying aluminum powder coatings on its rollers to give them traction in gripping the balls. They also cited the team’s use of a retractable tongue as a means of pulling the balls into the ladder rails to prevent them from being knocked loose by opponents.

SPANISH FORT — Have you ever wondered how nice it would be to have a robot clean your house like “Rosie” on the TV cartoon The Jetsons? Robots today are getting more and more sophisticated, from “Paro,” a baby seal robot designed to give comfort to nursing home patients, to a robot called, Banryu, a robot guard dragon.

There is eight million dollars in scholarship money available to high school students through FIRST, and many of Rothwell’s engineering students have gone on to college with merit-based scholarships due to their involvement with Chantilly Academy’s engineering classes and FIRST Robotics.

Robotics Team 612’s tremendous accomplishments were acknowledged at the March 2-4, 2006, NASA/Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Regional Competition.

They competed against 63 other high school teams from across the U.S. and Canada, and received the second-highest award bestowed by FIRST, the Engineering Inspiration Award. This award celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers within a team’s school and community, and it earned Team 612 a place among the 225 teams competing at the international competition held in April at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Team 612’s accomplishments continued at the Chesapeake Regional Competition, held March 16-18 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Competing once again against 63 other high school teams from across the U.S. and two from Great Britain, Chantilly Academy came away with the highest and most prestigious award at the regional level, the Chairman’s Award.

In presenting the award, Jeff Seaton, chief technology officer, NASA Langley Research Center, stated, “This team really gets it! They have inspired the judges and should inspire each of you. They exemplify all the criteria for this honor.

The donations pay for competition registration fees, purchase of new parts, transportation to events, and other required resources that the team needs to keep the program running. The mentors have also helped the team gain invaluable insight into the design and production of their robot by allowing access to professional quality labs to fabricate uniquely designed parts.

Chantilly Academy Team 612 consists of more than 30 students from Chantilly High School and surrounding Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) enrolled in engineering systems or engineering physics. Chantilly Academy is one of five academies in FCPS that enable students to actively explore career fields in scientific and engineering technology and health and human services.

The Chantilly Academy is a center within an existing high school that offers 18 advanced technical and specialized courses to approximately 1,200 high school students who commit to spending part of their school day at the academy. The academy successfully integrates career and academic preparation so that students have a variety of postsecondary options available to them upon graduating from high school.

Chantilly Academy provides classes that enable students to participate in meaningful career experiences such as paid work internships and to earn national certifications, Virginia Standards of Learning verified credits and articulated credits that can be transferred to college.

This year, Rothwell obtained an articulation agreement with George Mason University (GMU), School of Engineering, whereby high school students can earn college credit at GMU after successfully taking an engineering class at the Chantilly Academy. This is the first articulation agreement in the state of Virginia between a public high school and four-year university, and several academy students have already taken advantage of it.

Seaton noted this accomplishment by the Chantilly team in his remarks at the award ceremony in Annapolis, saying, “Due to the publicity this team has generated in local newspapers with their public outreach, a family contacted them who had a disabled infant whose mobility was severely limited.

The team jumped into action! They designed a switch-activated motorized baby walker in which the child could merely touch a button with the end of his limb and the device would be set in motion.

Today, a year later, he is moving about the house, getting into all kinds of trouble that all toddlers get into. Never being satisfied with their level of accomplishment, they are now developing a partnership with area occupational and physical therapists to continue this type of work.”

The team is continuing to work on projects that help children with physical disabilities, particularly two projects that are currently in the planning and design stages. One will provide mobility to a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy through the use of a voice-activated wheelchair.

The second project, for an eight-year-old boy also with cerebral palsy, will allow his therapist a greater degree of control over his posture through an innovative restraint system.

Local VEX Robotics competitions are being held in many different cities, states and countries. Teams can register for the VEX Robotics Competition to get their official VEX Team Identification Number and Team Welcome Kit. Once teams have registered, they can come back here and sign up for events they would like to participate in (listed below). More events are being added every week. Check back to see if new events have been announced in your area.

Versatile, affordable and accessible, the VEX Educational Robotics Design System is an ideal platform for student robotic competitions. Beginning builders can design, assemble and quickly iterate their robots through trial and error. Advanced builders can utilize sophisticated programming capabilities to power highly intelligent bots.

Vex robotics systems are popular in elementary, middle and high schools, as a way of teaching students the principles of engineering and science, math and technology. It’s an open-ended robotics platform that lets users create systems that an do all sorts of things — kits include gears, motors, wheels, metal and hardware. Some kits retail for less than $100.

Vex robotics competitions are increasingly popular, where teams of students will square off to achieve various goals, such as “Bridge Battle,” where two teams square off with a goal of having robots place tennis balls in red and blue color sections.

The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University conducts basic and applied research in robotics technologies to boost the productivity and competitiveness of businesses throughout the United States. The company’s rapid data growth drove need for scalable storage capacity and inability to react quickly to overnight surges in storage requirements.

Their existing outdated tape library with DLT tape technology required upgrade and decentralized backups were inconsistent and posed security concerns. In evaluating tape- and disk-based solutions, NREC rated products based on ease of use, centralized management, form factor, scalability, availability, interoperability and price. The Overland NEO 4100 offered the most compelling value proposition.

The overall goal of the FIRST program is to generate enthusiasm for science and engineering fields at the high school level and to encourage students to continue their studies at college. The academy students agree that they gain a healthy appreciation for science and engineering by pulling together their knowledge in mechanical, electrical and software engineering to design and build the robot, as well as learn valuable project management, marketing and team-building skills.

The student-led team receives valuable guidance from former engineers and science specialists, as well as many former team members attending college who have come back to assist the next generation.

The overall goal of the FIRST program is to generate enthusiasm for science and engineering fields at the high school level and to encourage students to continue their studies at college. The academy students agree that they gain a healthy appreciation for science and engineering by pulling together their knowledge in mechanical, electrical and software engineering to design and build the robot, as well as learn valuable project management, marketing and team-building skills.

The student-led team receives valuable guidance from former engineers and science specialists, as well as many former team members attending college who have come back to assist the next generation.

The FIRST robotics contest starts in January of each year when FIRST releases the rules of the competition in an internationally televised kickoff event provided by NASA. Immediately following the telecast, each team receives a kit of parts and a list of other eligible components that can be used to build the robot.

Teams are given exactly six weeks to design, build, test and ship a robot. The competition rules change each year and typically reward creativity of design and game play over brute strength of the robot.

A project this size takes a tremendous amount of teamwork, planning, commitment and money. Team 612’s operating budget is $25,000 to $30,000 per year, and students, teachers, mentors and parents give up a large amount of their free time to work on the robot. Without the generous donations from Northern Virginia corporate sponsors such as SAIC, Mitretek Systems, Northrop Grumman, Fiserv, Integrity Applications Inc, IEEE, Raytheon, Crest, OEC Engineering and Curry’s Auto Corp, the students would not be able to participate in FIRST competitions.