North County students battle with 'bots

By: DANIEL ELY - For the North County Times
Competition encourages science education | Sunday, March 9, 2008 4:26 PM PDT ∞

SAN DIEGO -- People who think that engineers and cheering crowds in facepaint are mismatched concepts would have been surprised to see the San Diego Sports Arena on Saturday, where 49 teams of high schoolers and adult mentors competed in the San Diego FIRST Robotics Regional.
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The arena was overrun with team mascots, cheering, dancing, and a sense of anticipation and even camaraderie between the teams.

FIRST, which stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway personal transport and the first portable dialysis machine.

The competition encourages young people to consider study and careers in science, technology, math, and engineering. Teams have six weeks to build a robot to compete in a very specialized competition.

"You can't find enough good talent," said Kamen, addressing the crowd at Saturday's opening ceremonies, "so you have to create it."

The teams appeared to be having a great time.

"We share equipment," said Todd Parr, a mentor from Poway High School's Team Spyder. "If we can assist another team, even if we're competing against them, that's the point. We want to be sure every team has the best robot out there."

"It's students," said George Stimson, mentor for San Dieguito Academy's Team Paradox, "students doing the programming, students designing, students building. You don't learn nearly as well until you actually use it for something."

Team Spyder and Team Paradox, along with Ramona High's Neo-Tech Robotics and Rancho Bernardo High's Team Pedestrian, represented North County. Other teams came from as far away as Alaska, Mississippi, and even Canada.

"For a rookie team, (the competition) is great," said Jay Dey, 15, from Rancho Bernardo High's Team Pedestrian. "This is a place where the impossible can happen."

Unlike robot competitions popular on television, the robots in Saturday's competition didn't smash each other up ... at least not on purpose. The competition is task-based, and changes every year.

This year's game, called "Overdrive" pits two teams, red and blue, each with three participants against each other in a 50-foot-long oval track. An "overpass" that resembles a set of monkey bars straddles the track, and has four balls perched on top of it, two red and two blue. Robots score points by completing circuits of the track (more if pushing a ball while doing so), tossing their ball over the overpass, or for placing it back on the overpass before the end of the round. Further complicating this task, at the start of the match, robots run on their internal programming and score higher points than for the rest of the match, where the robot's drivers take control directly.

"It's not only entertaining, it's mind-boggling watching the technology work," said Hal Ross, who drove the D'Penguineers team from Goleta, Calif. to the competition. "The fact that they got from the classroom to here ---- they're all winners."

Of the four North County teams, San Dieguito Academy's Team Paradox fared the best in the competition, ranking third in individual scores and moving on to the semifinals. Though knocked out in the semifinals by the team that would go on to win the championship, its members remained resolute and plan to participate in the next regionals competition in Los Angeles.

"We can either freak out, or we can work it out," said Stimson.

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