The 2014 FIRST Robotics Competition kicked off over the weekend, and high school students around the world (nearly 70,000, according to organizers) got their first look at this year’s arena and game.
Each year, the basic structure of the FIRST Robotics Competition remains the same, but the specific game that students must design their robots to compete in varies. This year, the game is called “Aerial Assist,” and it puts a premium on getting robots to work together to score points.
Watching the competition can sometimes look like mass chaos to an untrained observer, but there are a clearly defined set of rules, and part of the fun of the event is seeing the strategies teams devise to maximize their scores. FIRST provided the video walkthrough below to familiarize people with this year’s edition:
Students now have six weeks to design, build, program and test their robots. After that, the robots will be sealed up and transported to various regional and district competitions, with the top teams moving on to the championship round in St. Louis.
For more information on FIRST, go to its official website: usfirst.org