The Bullbot team had an exciting summer fundraising, sharing our love of robotics, and helping to start some FIRST Lego Leagues. See the community section of our website to learn more about these activities.
FIRST Robotics Experience
Each year we compete in the Oregon Robotics Competition (FRC) regional event held in Portland, Oregon. We hope to make it to the Nationals competition in Altanta sometime.
Each year teams are given a different challenge. All teams are given the challenge during a kickoff event which is a webcast. Once the challenge is announced the teams have approximately six weeks to design and build their robot. The robot is shipped to a regional event and waits in storage until the scheduled regional event competition. If a team qualifies at one of the regional events then the robot is shipped to Atlanta to await the championship event.
Benefit to Students
Students experience real world problem solving. The joy of an idea becoming a reality and the agony when an idea doesn’t work. The joy of teamwork and the agony of teamwork. The agony of managing schedule and budget. The joy of completing the robot in time to ship. The joy of finding a major sponsor to help get through another year. Students participating in FIRST are ahead of the curve when it comes to that first job or even college because they understand what it takes to succeed.
This year’s Challenge
This year’s challenge was inspired by the Apollo 11 success 40 years ago. This years game is called "Lunacy". Robots can’t be bigger than 28x38x60 and have to weigh less than 120 pounds. This year all robots will have special wheels and the arena will have
special flooring material call FRP. What this really means is that the robots will have difficulty with traction affecting how they move. With the combination of the floor material and the wheels it will be like driving on ice. Checkout our page on Lunacy the game for more information.
What is FIRST
FIRST was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. He also has many other inventions that help people live a better life. FIRST has a program for ages 6 through High School, all promoting science and engineering. They have over 133,000 participating students, 37,000 mentors, and 19,000 volunteers. The FRC program that we compete in has over 1,300 teams with over 32,000 high-school students.
