Innovation First
Inc.(IFI) is a company who
manufactures robots and is currently a leader in educational
and competitive robotics. IFI is the creator of the
VEX Robotics company who create a robotics system
designed for the classroom enviroment.
FIRSTTech Challenge and
VEX Robotics both host competitions in
which school nation wide and worldwide participate in.
Each year our advisor, Ms. Min,
receives an email containing the competition objectives with
dates, specifications, and rules pertaining to the current
competition.
Each competition contains:
Inspection of the robot to make
sure it follows competition requirements. i.e. robot
measurements, parts used.
Two teams forming an alliance
(red or blue)
A playing field
An engineering notebook/journal
The
Game
Two robots from two teams form an
assigned alliance.
The robots are placed on the field
to compete and test the efficiency of their
robot.
The two alliances try to score as
many points using different strategies and mechanisms of the
robot
The game is broken down into two
sections:
20
seconds Autonomous Mode, whre a program is stored into the
microcontroller that directs the function of the robot to
operate without human interference
Two minute Operation
Control, where a remote is used to manually
operate the robot to score points.
Throughout the competition, judges
interview the teams about:
Building and functions of the
robot
Problems that
occurred during the building/designing/programming
process
Fundraising
Roles of each member
Engineering notebook that
contains all the daily happenings during the period of
time used to prepare for the competition. i.e. problems
during building, design blueprints, programs used and
tested, team
reflections.
Current
Competition
2008-2009 VEX Elevation
Competition: objective:Score 3"x3" cubes into triangular goals of various heights. There is also a platform on which there is a huge cube "bonus ball". You may go to the vex robotics website under resources panel below for more details.