H.S. Students Play 'Sports' With Robots

FIRST Robotics Competition challenges students to get technical.

ByABC News
April 5, 2008, 2:25 PM

April 6, 2008 — -- Think of them as budding Transformer builders. These guys and girls don't need to play basketball themselves when they can build robots that practically do it for them.

Hundreds of high school students gathered at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City on April 5 and 6 for the 16th annual FIRST Robotics Competition, an intense battle for technically attuned teens.

Short for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, the FIRST competition brought together roughly 65 high school teams from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania (even a handful from the United Kingdom) to display what they and their robots are made of.

"We're doing pretty well this time, we're feeling a lot better from our last regional," said Bret Minnbhan, a 17-year old junior at Bishop Brady High School in Concord, N.H. "I am nervous about whether or not we'll get into the final top eight.

"This is important to me since it is the first time I'm building robots. At first, I didn't tell my friends that I was going to be building robots, but eventually they found out, and when they did, they thought it was cool. But there are some people who think I'm such a nerd for doing robotics."

The gathering is the next stage of the competition, which began in January, and culminates this weekend with trophies in a variety of categories, recognizing the hard work and effort the students have put into building their robots.

"I'm not nervous because we're going to win. We're better than all the other robots. We're very fast, we can pick up the ball, we can cap the ball, we can shoot the ball, and a lot of the other robots can shoot the ball but not cap the ball," said Theodora Kunicki, 18, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, N.Y.

The intense competition began earlier this year, when teams of young people received a special FIRST kit, with a common set of rules, to build the robot that would bring them to New York. Weight and size restrictions assured that all participants had the same materials to create their robots.

"So, essentially, the game constitutes the problem," said FIRST regional director Randy Schaeffer. "We get teams of kids and their mentors who have to come up with solutions. And this is the same process that an engineer in the industry goes through every day.

"They have to master their design concept with the solution and also the resources available to execute. And this is the kind of experience the kids are getting, and employers need workers with those kinds of skills."

With kits in hand, the teens were on their own to tap their ingenuity, creativity and problem-solving skills to create their perfect robots.