Monday, March 31, 2008

Bots battle in Boston for FIRST competition

A raucous crowed cheered on student-built robots at the latest FIRST Robotics Competition Boston Regional, which wrapped up on Saturday.

An alliance of three teams, from Tewksbury Memorial High School, Trinity High School of Manchester, N.H., and Shenendehowa High School in Clifton Park, NY, won the competition. Teams from all over the country were eligible to participate, and robots made by students at high schools from as far as New Jersey and Ohio competed.

Before the final round, Blue Man Group performed and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino addressed the crowd. A huge video wall divided the hockey rink into a playing field and the "pits," an area where teams could fine-tune their robots.

Colin Angle, CEO of Roomba-maker iRobot Corp., in a break between judging the competition and announcer-mandated "hokey-pokeying," called the level of engineering the students produced "awesome."

"Look at team 20 over there -- they've got welded joints, carbon-fiber rods," he said. "It's remarkable what these kids and their mentors have done in six weeks."

Boston University Academy senior Sam Roberts' team didn't make the finals, but he said he had fun at his fourth and last competition. Roberts and the BU Academy team packed up their robot, RoboRed, in the pits while the final rounds got under way.

"It performed pretty well for what it was built for," he said. "We scored plenty of points."