FIRST World Championships 2013

Another year in the books for volunteering at the FIRST Robotics World Championships.  Easily one of my favorite events to volunteer for.  It's usually the one event I try to get on for multiple days for either the Regional St. Louis competition or World event depending on how much time off I have banked up at work.

It starts with a challenge that is given to each of the different levels (JFLL, FLL, FTC, and FRC) and based on some theme.   This year was a combination of ascending higher and mobility.  The FTC were moving rings from one rack to another tic-tac-toe like board.  The FRC were shooting flying discs at holes 15 feet high or so.  It's great to see the ingenuity that the students bring to the table to create the robots and accomplish their goals.  The students only get about 3 months to accomplish these goals and do the tasks at hand.  By the time these teams get to the World Championships the machines they create are pretty awesome.  Wish I could of been doing this cool stuff as a student.  In lieu of that, I shall volunteer for FIRST Robotics.

Kiwanis should almost start supporting teams or the organization.  But that's just me.

US First Robotics Competion 2012

Pretty cool event this year at the US First Robotics Championships.  Got to be a part of the Expedition Team.  Pretty cool.  Get to experience a lot of different events over several days.  Actually got to see part and be part of the competition this year.

First day got to be a pit runner for the FIRST Lego League (FLL).  Mostly involved queuing up teams to go to their practice events.  Involved a lot of running around as one might expect.  Ultimately I helped these kids that worked really hard to get to their rounds while being the awesome leader that I am.

The afternoon involved the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) as a field reseter for the official first day of completion for them.  These are the high school kids with the smaller bots.  Their mission was to "bowl" over crates to release raquet balls and stack the crates back up right side up with at least one ball in them.  There's more to it than that and a lot of was to score lots of points.

FIRST Robotics Regional March 2012

This past weekend the FIRST Robotics Regional competition were held this past weekend (March 22 - 24, 2012).  It is a neat event.  This years goal for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the Rebound Rumble, where teams are tasked with collecting and shooting foam basketballs into basketball hoops.  The first day had more cooperation on some of the bridges.  It got more interesting as the day progressed and bugs got worked out of the robots.  The second day really got good.  Robots were tweaked and got better in time.  Scores evened out between the red and blue teams.  There were many more rounds where there were higher scores of 50+ points for teams.  The final rounds really got good with really good shooting and balancing on bridges.  Teams really got aggressive on defense and attempting to get three bots on the balancing bridges.  Lots of robot tipping as well.

It is a neat even to volunteer for.  Sign up to volunteer for them if you get a chance at www.usfirst.org

Edit (4/15/2012):
Finally got around to emptying the camera.  Photos are below of some of the neat stuff going on.

Great concert at Sheldon Concert Hall with Hayes Carll

Got to hang out at the Sheldon Concert Hall with KDHX on March 18, 2012.  Neat show.  Got to see Hayes Carll and the opening act of Honey Honey.  Not a bad gig to put in a few hours of work for a show with awesome music.  There were funny stories, great music, and great people.

Should be an interesting start to the volunteering season.  Coming up next weekend is the FIRST Robotics Regional completion.  The following weekend of March 31, 2012 there is going to be a Kiwanis Blood Drive at the Public Safety Building in O'Fallon, from 9am to 1pm.  I then run over to the Toastmasters Regional Contest later that afternoon and a KDHX phone drive.  Looking forward to the madness.

Interesting Weekend @ F.I.R.S.T. Robitics Competition

April 29, 2011:  USFirst.org Robotics Championships 2011 @ Edwards Jones Dome in St. Louis, MO.
Got to escort teams of kid and coaches (between first and third grade) between their presentation table to their review session at their designated times.  Assisted in judging by running tallies between the main area and the judging area.   Helped create award certificates for the final presentation.  Kept things running smoothly to accomplish everything from sign in to awards within a 4 hour window.  Also assisted with the presentation of the medals for all of the children that participated in the event.  Their were 29 teams from 11 states that were involved in the events for JFLL.

It was interesting.  Their are 4 levels of competition.  JFLL, FLL, FTC, FRC.JFLL (Junior FIRST Lego League) involves kids in grades K - 3 and has kids do research on some chosen topic area.  The teams then select some topic within that topic area, do research, and build a lego model.  This year's topic was "Body Forward" All topics for JFLL and FLL were related to the body.

FLL (FIRST Lego League) is geared to grades 4-8.  This team get to build robots out of lego robotics kits.  All geared towards completing some basic missions relating to the topic.  Some missions might include having a robot place a band aid on a patient or retrieving a syringe or mending a fake bone.

FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) is geared towards kids in grades 9-12.  These kids get to build robots that run though an obstacle course and complete some assigned tasks.

FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) is also geared to kids in grades 9-12.  Here kids completed one of 2 possible types of robot competitions.  One competition involves getting large inner tubes on hooks 12 feet in the air.  Their is also a side mission of having to get a little robot up a pole the quickest.  The other big competition is an areal act of building a flying robot that is controllable enough to land on various platforms.  Ground robots will also try to gather and shoot balls into a box.